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RIGHT AJVD WROIVG 



IN 



MASSACHUSETTS 



BY MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN. 



There is a history in all' men's lives?, 
Figuring the nature of the time deceased ; 
The which observed, a man may prophesy, 
AVith a clear aim at tlie main chance ofthings 
As not yet come to life. Shakespeare. 



ih 



BOSTO]^^ 

. > 

DOW & JACKSON'S ANTI-SLAVERY PRESS. 

14 Devonshire Street, 

1S39. 



RIGHT AND WRONG 



CHAPTER I. 

RETROSPECTION. 

Before bringing forward upon the stage the characters who fig- 
ure in the drama. I have endeavored to make the reader acquaint- 
ed with the ground on which the different scenes were to be acted. 

Thierry. 

The position of New England in 1829, was a 
most cheerless one for Freedom. All the great 
interests of the country were nearly or remotely 
involved in slaveholding, through all their various 
arrangements, civil, ecclesiastical, mercantile and 
matrimonial; yet all disclaimed its aUiance. Ev- 
ery body was, in some way or other, actively or 
passively, sustaining slavery ; yet every body dis- 
claimed all responsibility for its existence, oppos- 
ed all efforts for its extinction, and was /as much 
anti-slavery as any body else.' Even the natur- 
al and kindly tide of human sympathy for suffer- 



ing, was turned away from the service of Freedom 
by the Colonization Society. The moving prin- 
ciples of Northern and Southern life, had become 
inseparably mingled below the surface of events, 
like the roots of giant trees beneath the soil. 

In the midst of this utter ignorance, iron indif- 
ference and b^se hypocrisy respecting that ground- 
woik of the human soul, — its Freedom — rose up 
one to vindicate the grandeur and paramount im- 
portance of its universal claim. He was young — 
unknown — poor : — " lord of his presence, and no 
wealth beside." But he had that best of all edu- 
cations, self-education, and that best of all quali- 
fications for his work, an entire devotedness to the 
principles of liberty which he had espoused. Ev- 
ery step he took, was characteristic, He was ena- 
bled by his ability as a writer, his skill as a prac- 
tical mechanic, and his laborious self-denial, to is- 
sue the first number of a periodical, ^^ithout hav- 
ing obtained a single subscriber. To him and to 
the principles he advocated, the important thing 
w^as to find readers ; which the power evinced in 
his little sheet enabled him to do. Its name was 
characteristic. It was neither a "journal," nor 
an " observer," nor a '' register," nor a " record- 
er," nor an '^examiner," He called it THE 



LIBERATOR, Any other name would have 
but feebly expressed the depth and affirmative na- 
ture of its principles. Those sacred and funda- 
mental principles found a response in the land, 
though the hearts from which it came, were few 
and far between. The New England Anti-Sla- 
very Society was formed ; and as man after man 
planted himself by the side of Garrison and Knapp, 
a sense of duty soemed to pervade the soul of 
each — the duty of promulgating the truth of 
whose beauty and necessity his soul was then 
made sensible. The Liberator was not their or- 
gan, in an official sense, — but how could they 
conscientiously do otherwise than sustain the in- 
strumentality which their own experience had 
proved so effectual ? 

They lectured on the subject of slavery as they 
found opportunity; and by circulation of the Lib- 
erator and such publications as their means could 
furnish, and by diligence in Conversation and argu- 
ment, they succeeded in arousing a portion of the 
community to its consideration. 

Though the idea of united, concentrated moral 
effort, was familiar to their minds, — though the 
land was in fact permeated by education and mis- 
sionary Societies, — though this was emphatically 
1* 



the age of benev^olence and of voluntary associa- 
tion, yet a mighty preparation of heart was need- 
ed in every individual wlio listened to this call of 
Liberty, before he could resolve to avail himself 
of similar means for the promulgation of her 
great principles : principles, which, lying deep- 
er than the shallow foundations of the popular'be- 
nevolent enterprises of the dav, were identical 
w^itJi those of Christianity herself. 

Christianity, in every age, has ever presented 
herself as the antagonist of its crying abomination. 
The same in spirit, her visible appearance is mod- 
ified by the giant obstacle she meets in each suc- 
cessive generation. Sometimes, in conflict with 
idolatry, she stands with her fiice of triumphant 
brightness opposed to the refined, the intellectual, 
and the powerful ; and every step is over a crumb- 
ling altar and a prostrate priest. Sometimes, as 
in the days immediately preceding those of which 
we write, her advanced guard are casting out the 
unclean spirit of intemperance. In the close-suc- 
ceeding years, she comes, like liberty, to inhab- 
it the dwelling from which intemperance has been 
banished to make room for her beatific presence. 

By this call of the age for a manifestation of 
Christianity against slavery, were hundreds drawn 
together during the first two years of the existence 



of the N. E. Anti-Slavery Association. They 
came fioni every sect, and class, and party — of 
every age and sex and color : and often might 
the feelins; with which the differina; sectaries be- 
held, each, the anxious labors of the other for the 
same object, and to their astonishment found how 
much they possessed in common, have been well 
expressed by the colloquy of the high caste Ger- 
man protestant and the despised Jew. 

'•Till* conduct, Jew, rlotli verily seem Chrlstinn." 
"God bless you ! what makes me to you a Cliristian 
Makes you to me a Jew." 

To establish their association on this broad and 
enduring foundation ofsympathy and earnest union 
in the exercise of every means sanctioned by each 
member's idea of law, humanity and religion, was 
the early labor of New England abohtionists. 
At their second annual gathering, Charles FoUeu 
offered the following resolution : — 

" Resolved, that this society has for hssole object 
the abolition of slavery in the United States, with- 
out any reference to local interests, political par- 
ties, or religious sects. " 

This resolution, says the report of that year, 
" was sustained in a truly admirable manner, and 
unanimously adopted." 



8 



The enthusiasm for liberty was sufficiently 
strong toovercome not only bigotry but selfishness. 
Indeed those who had sacrificed lucrative or hon- 
orable situations, or labored gratuitously, receiv- 
ing nothing in guerdon but the misrepresentation 
of the oppressor, were hardly likely to yield to the 
temptation incident toother associated operations, 
— that of making them subserve the love of pow- 
er or praise. Sectarianism and selfishness having 
been overcome, it was without any emotion but 
that of joyful anticipation, that the New England 
Society labored to carjy out the following resolu- 
tion, introduced by Mr. Garrison in 1833: — 

'^Resolved, that the formation of a national so- 
ciety is essential to the complete regeneration of 
public sentiment on the subject of slavery ; and 
that the Board of IManagers of the New England 
Society be authorized to call a national meeting 
of the friends of abolition, for the purpose of or- 
ganizing such a society." 

Their success was thus announced in the annual 
report of 1835: — 

" In consequence of the formation of the Ameri- 
can Society, and of the design contemplated to form 



State Societies in the New England States, which 
has been already accomplished in Maine, New 
Hampshire and Vermont, the operations of the 
New England Soc'ety during the past yef*r have 
been very much confined to Massachusetts, and 
hereafter it will be only a State Society." 

These enlarged souls thought it no humiliation 
to take a lower seat. Their object was Lib- 
erty throughout the land unto all the inhabit- 
ants thereof, and not the establishment of a pow- 
erful institution, of which they should have the 
control. They go on to say, — 

"Though the comparative importance of this 
association has, owing to the causes just mention- 
ed, been in some measure diminished, yet its zeal 
activity and numbers are unimpaired, while iis 
principles are spreading with unexampled rapid- 
ity." 

We find them abjuring every thought of control, 
jurisdiction, centralization and monopoly of means 
and power. Voluntarily taking what in the ap- 
prehension of many would be a lower seat, they 
assumed the name of the Massachusetts, instead of 
the New England Anti-Slavery Society. The plan 
of a national organization, with its various compo- 



10 



nent parts, from state and county to town and par- 
ish societies, was skilfully planned, and its execu- 
tion commenced with great spirit. There was no 
difficulty in obtaining funds for the use of the Ex- 
ecutiv'e Committee of this national association, as 
all the abolitionists were its members, and their 
confidence in the men they had selected to form 
this Committee, was very great. Unlike the pa- 
rent and pioneer Committee, it numbered among 
its members men of wealth ; and their liberality 
enabled them to send into the field numbers of able 
financial and lecturing agents. 

At the State gatherings and New England Con- 
ventions, these agents were wont to take donations 
and pledges, which IMassachusetts abolitionists, 
with their characteristic disinterestedness, w^ere 
anxious to make, that the central committee might 
be supplied, even though it drained the State So- 
ciety of its resources. 

A practical difficulty soon became obvious. 
Some, meaning to pledge money to the State 
Society, found their pledge received as to the 
National Society — others, meaning to sustain 
the National, found their pledge recorded as 
to the State ; and great confusion, both in the 
accounts of the agents, and in the minds of 



11 



abolitionists, was the consequence. Notwith- 
standing this, the work went most encouragingly 
forwai-d ;— all being dehghted with the efficiency 
of the National Society, however inconvenient 
and depressing, in a* business sense, its mode of 
operation might be, and however the action of the 
State Society was paralyzed by the labors of its 
financial agents. Still it was thought that some 
arrangement might be devised by which to 
obviate the uncertainty and inconvenience which 
the double draft of funds occasioned ; and at 
the last quarterly meeting of the Massachusetts 
Society in 1835, a committee was appointed to 
consider the subject. They reported that the 
then existing "arrangements were very embarrass- 
ing to the Massachusetts Society ; but no plan 
was adopted for more convenient ones. 

This w^as the situation and bearing of the fiscal 
arrangements at the beginning of 1836. 

Meanwhile the grand battle had been going 
powerfully on, and the energies of all were se- 
verely tasked. The enthusiasm for the cause had 
overleaped not only sectarian divisions, but the 
" graceful feebleness," which the age cherislied 
as an ornament in the female character. The 
women of the cause, in the difficult times of 1835, 



12 



were peculiarly active. They devoted themselves 
to the work of obtaining signatures to petitions 
with commendable enersv. A historv of their 
progress from door to door, with the ob^acles 
they encountered, would be at once toucliingy 
ludicrous, and edifying. Young women, whose 
labors depended on public opinion, laid the claims 
of the enslaved to freedom before those whose 
simple word might grant or deny their own means 
of subsistence. Benevolent-looking elderly gen- 
tlemen, individuals of the highest respectability 
and influence in the community, were wont to 
witness the appeal kindly, favoring the applicant 
with good advice as to her future course. 

" My dear young lady, it gives ic.i pain to see 
your efforts so entirely wasted.- You only injure 
the cause you espouse by thus leaving your sphere. 
You actually prevent those who are capable of 
understanding tliis question, and whom their sex 
points out as the only proper persons to consider 
it, from entering upon its consideration. You 
make the whole matter seem little, and below the 
atteniion of men."' But the women judged for 
themselves, and very rationally too, that the 
women whose efforts for the cause could not be 
hindered by men, were more valuable auxiliaries 



13 



than the men whose dignity forbade them to be 
fellow-laborers with women. 

The individual and collective energy of the 
community, both moral and, physical, was that 
year employed to keep women from leaving what 
was termed " their appropriate sphere," by peti- 
tioning and holding the meeiings of their respective 
Societies ; but in vain. 

Their sole reply to the restrictive efforts of 
the public, was conveyed in such resolutions as 
the following :- — '' Resolved, that, in a conflict 
of principles; vv^e believe Scripture to teach that 
there is neither bond or free, male or female, for- 
eigner or native ; but all are one in Christ Jesus ; 
and therefore feel ourselves called in common with 
man, to toil and suffer, as all must, who effectually 
defend the truth." Manifold were the pretences 
under \vhich men disguised their hatred to freedom. 
From the beginning, those who professed to be 
thoroughly opposed to Slavery in the abstract, 
(such was the cant phrase of that time,) had 
concealed their hatred to liberty under the ^uUe 
of dislike to the measures of abolitionists. A$ 
those m.easures were entirely unexceptionable in 
reality, the pretence settled down into a stereo- 
typed aversion to harsh language. Under this 
term, were comprehended that faithfulness to 



14 



principle, accuracy of moral classification, appro- 
priateness of style to subject, and strict impar- 
tiality which the effects of Mr. Garrison's ex- 
ample had been to make general in the cause. It 
was this example of fidelity which made an ex- 
pression of confidence in him, or an expression of 
approbation of his course, equivalent to a test-act. 
There are so many persons who will assent to an 
abstractly righteous proposition, though they start 
back in alarm from righteousness personified, 
that it was fortunate for the cause, if such were 
prevented by his faithfulness from clogging it with 
their useless numbers. 

The most delightful and at the same time the 
most surprising feature of the Anti-Slavery cause 
was the harmonious co-operation of all engaged 
in its advancement. Delightful, because rare in 
any circumstances, — surprising, because the ma- 
terials of which the Society \vas formed, were, to 
human eye, so discordant. But each member, 
in virtue of a clear perception of the truth that 
the whole is greater than a part, when sect came 
in collision with the universal cause of freedom, 
made the less give way to the greater, and each 
was zealously and kindly watchful, not to enforce 
his distinctive opinions, in religion or politics, on 
his brother. Seeing that his brother had religious 



15 



and political principles of his own, he contented 
himself with urging their constant application to 
the case of the enslaved. This watchfulness was 
perhaps more careful in Massachusetts, than in 
any other state. Abolition there had been a 
growth and not a manufacture ; and it was observ- 
able that the more devoted was the zeal of the 
abolitionists, the more enlarged was their tolera- 
tion. It was neither natural nor desirable that 
differences of opinion should not occasional- 
ly appear in Abolition meetings, but their ap- 
pearance was never the signal of wrath and clamor. 
The great hope of the association was that the 
church might be roused by its instrumentality to 
put forth her moral power against slavery ; and at 
the New England convention of 1836, a resolution 
was proposed declaring that a church using its 
influence to delay and prevent the fulfihnent of 
the will of Christ, has no claim to be considered 
his ; and that only those churches who employed 
their associated influence for reform, should be 
considered the true and real church of God. 
Elizur Wright objected to any resolution which 
would divide the church ; — our object was to 
purify. Rev. Mr, Peckham followed him, de- 
claring that this Convention, not being an ecclesi- 
astical body, was not qualified to sit in judgment 



16 



on the churches. Many of the members of the 
Convention were not, he said, even church mem- 
bers, and therefore it was improper for them to sit 
in judgment on the conduct of church members. 
Should we say to this man, who is an abolitionist, 
Stand thou here, and to another, who is opposed 
to abohtion, Stand thou there ? Were there no 
spots upon our own garments, which those we 
undertake to sever from the church might point 
out ? On the question of abolition he was ready 
to go as far as any Anti-Slavery man he ever saw ; 
but when a measure was proposed that must divide 
the churches, he must oppose it. The Rev. Geo. 
Allen, of Shrewsbury, thought the passage of a 
resolution dangerous which might be followed by 
denunciation, vituperation and division of the 
churches. The resolution was recommitted. 
Subsequently one was offered by Rev. J. T. 
Woodbury, enforcing discipline and excommuni- 
cation of slaveholders. The strong uords of 
truth he uttered on that occasion sank deep into 
the hearts of hundreds who heard them, and 
influence their conduct to this day. 

'' VVhat is the Church doing?" he said. '' Sell- 
ing indulgences for sin — the worst of sins — 
the sin oi man-stealing — yea, the sin of stealing 



17 



and selling a brother in the Church ! What do 
they do ? The hammer is lifted over the head 
of the Christian — yes, the Christian, the child of 
God — and the cry is, who bids? Brother sells 
his brother, and the Churcli says, it is all 
right, while the watchmen, on the walls of Zion, 
pass the word, all's well ! Though the auction- 
eer is a church member, the seller, and buyer, 
and the poor slave, all members of the same 
Church, yet the Church does not censure the 
deed. It is all right. * * **The Church that 
does not pronounce slavery a sin, and deal with 
its members, who refuse to confess and forsake 
it, in effect, licenses slavery. It stands as the 
virtual endorser of the crime. If men are robbed 
of the Bible, and of all knowledge of letters ; if 
parents are punished, as felons, for teaching their 
own children the alphabet, and the Church does 
nothing, then the Church, by its silence, endor- 
ses it, and declares it is all right. If parents are 
robbed of their children, forced^o see them drag- 
ged to the market, and knocked off to the negro 
speculator — the Church stands by, and says, ''It's 
all right.'' The Church allows this, not only in 
its members, but in its elders, and deacons, and 
pastors, and bishops ; and hence it stands justly 
responsible for selling indulgences to hcense thi3 
sin of slavery. * * * What! shall the Ameri- 
can churches form Bible societies, and pledge 
themselves before God, that they will give the 
Bible to the whole world, and then withhold it 
2* 



18 



from twenty-five hundred thousand souls in their 
very midst ? What liave we seen here ? A 
Virginia Christian slaveholder conies here, and 
a[)peals to us ahout the Virginia State Bihle So- 
ciety, to send the Bible to the extreme ends of 
the earth. * * * Why don't he give the Bible 
to his own slaves then, and teach them to read it, 
before he asks for our money to help him send 
Bibles to the slaves in sin in distant lands? 
How does he look ; the agent of the Virginia 
Bible Society, begging for money, to give the 
Bible to Chinese men a id Hindoo pariahs, and 
refusing to give it, or let us give it, to six hundred 
thousand immortal beings in his own State 9 
Why, what a hypocrite ! Is there a being on 
earth, the most degraded even of the miserable 
slaves, whose souls are left to perish, who cannot 
see the inconsistency, the absurdity, the hypocri- 
sy of this ^ Is God a fool, to be thus mocked ? 
Sir, I will lai-e my voice against such hypocrisy 
as long as I live.* It shall ring in the ears of ev- 
ery slaveholder who asks us to help him give 
Bibles to the heathen, thousands of miles off, 
while he withholds them from the slaves at his 
own door. Why, his very Bibles, which he 
sends to the Hindoo, are bought with the blood 
and souls of his slaves. It is dividing the gains 
of hell with God. * * * If this is Christianity, 
well might the heathen say, God defend us from 
Christianity." 



19 



A graphic picture, distinct as just, and yet there 
sat a few in this very convention " ready to go 
as far as any Anti-Slavery man they ever saw," 
who deprecated division on Anti-Slavery ground, 
though their general principle was, to hold no 
fellowship with immorality. The resolution of 
Mr. Woodbury passed, with but one dissenting 
voice. Mr. Sewall, who voted in the negative, 
and I\Ir.]\Iay, who declined voting on the question, 
explained their conduct by stating that they " en- 
tertained doubts whether any body of Christians 
had a right to exclude a man from the communion 
table at all." At the same time they heartily 
agreed with the Abolition spirit of the resolution, 
and thought it the duty of Christians who believe 
in the propriety of this discipline in the church 
to vote for if. In the course of the Convention, 
a resolution was presented, involving a personal 
pledge from each member, of life and fortune and 
honor to the cause ; and well-remembered words 
of fervent solemnity yet sound in the ears of 
those who were then adjured to stand firm, "come 
what might." Women were earnesily entreated 
to assist the passage of this resolution, and almost 
all present united in it. 

The ecclesiastical opposition to the cause could 



20 



not fail to be brought out in bold relief by the 
proceedings of this Convention. During the wliole 
year, its workings were manifest, and at the annual 
meeting o( the Massachusetts Society in 1837, its 
effiirts were successfully exerted in reducing the 
Abolitionists to the necessity of meeting in a 
stable. Though the church cast its whole weight 
in their way, the State was less obstinate in its 
opposition, and tbe use of the State House was 
permitted for one session of the Society. Mr. 
Stanton wished that this yielding on the part of 
the State might be considered as a keen rebuke to 
those churches which had refused their houses x)!' 
worship, that we might plead in them the cause of 
2,000,000 of American heathen. Mr. Fitch 
deprecated this " turning aside" to remark upon 
the obstacles cast in our way. He feared there 
was danger of losing sight of the end of our 
organization as an Anti-Slavery Society. " We 
should not let these efforts for free discussion so 
absorb our minds. Let us think of the infinitely 
more oppressive wrongs of the poor slave." There 
was an indefinable something in these remarks, 
which revealed an entire want of comprehension 
of the hearts of abolitionists in general. Was it 
for themselves, then, that they made these efforts, 



21 



and administered these rebukes ? Were not their 
thoughts riveted on the Slave? and was not this 
fixedness of determination the very cause of their 
rebukes, and of their efforts for free discussion ? 
Free discussion of what ? Why, of the Slaves' 
WH'ongs and the means of righting them ! and yet 
this incomprehensible jargon about turning aside! 
During the succeeding rneeiings, the Anti- 
Slavery spirit swelled high and strong. The 
Liberator was warmly sustained by all the friends 
present, among whom were Messrs. Chaplin, 
Walker, May, and Stanton. *' The inquiry is 
often made of me," said Mr. Stanton, " why 
does not the American Society sustain it ? The 
answer is, Let Massachusetts sustain it, as she 
ought." Mr. St. Clair, in particular, express- 
ed the warmest eulogy on the Liberator. Mr. 
Garrison spoke as one knowing the folly of be- 
ing elevated by human applause, or depressed 
by human censure ; he remarked that it was nei- 
ther his aim nor expectation, to please every 
subscriber. '' It must suffice that free discus- 
sion is my motto, and those who are opposed to 
me in sentiment are always invited to occupy a 
place." Political action, as one of the modes 
contemplated by the Society, was adverted to. 



22 



Mr. Stanton introduced a resolution, affirming that 
the people of Massachusetts ought not to vote 
for an upholder of slavery. Mr. Garrison warm- 
ly seconded the resolution. 

At the New-England Convention of 1837, Mr. 
Phelps followed up the efforts u])on the church, 
by a series of resolutions, accompanied by most 
convincing reasons, urging the necessity of the 
excommunication of slaveholders, and a solemn 
consideration of the question whether, the churches 
remaining obdurate, it be not the duty of the ad- 
vocates of truth and righteousness to ^' come out 
from among them, and be separate." These res- 
olutions were heartily approved by the Conven- 
tion, with the exception of the Rev. Samuel Ijee. 
The argument by Mr. Peckham, in 1836, that 
this Convention was not an ecclesiastical body, and 
that many of its members were unconnected with 
any church, w^eighed much in the mind of Mr. 
Lee. He represented that the brethren present, 
ought to consider, before adopting the resolutions, 
the manner in which they would be met by the 
associations of the IMinistry. They will say that 
this Convention was composed of men who hold 
that Christ is God, and must be worshipped as 
such, and others who deny this, and believe it 



23 



idolatry so to worship him; again there are 
others who make no pretensions to religion, but 
trample under foot the blood of Christ : now 
they will say, these persons come together in an 
Anti-Slavery Convention, conniving at each 
other's sins, and then pass resolutions touching 
a particular sin about which the church differs. 
There were a great many ministers engaged in this 
good work, but though we were abolitionists, must 
not the ministers of the church stand up for the 
church, and protect her walls from being thrown 
down ? These resolutions proposed to divide the 
church — that u'ould be the effect. They would be 
an entering wedge. They would be driven home 
by the newspapers and other influences, till the 
church was severed. Subsequently Mr. Lee gave 
his brethren a word of caution not to say too 
much against the church. Bad as it w^as, it was 
the light of the world ; and if we wanted to save 
the world, we must preserve the church of 
Christ on earth*. 

The Convention sat uneasily under this speech. 
Its spirit was faithfully and eloquently opposed, 
and the resolutions were adopted with but three 
dissenting voices ; one, Mrs. Fifield of Weymouth, 
on the ground that it was too great an assumption 



24 



of power in man to exclude his brother from the 
table of the Lord. The Rev. George Trask introdu- 
ced a resolution on the subject of peace, as con- 
nected with abolition, which was sustained by- 
William Goodell and others. Mr. Goodell said 
that he was a peace man, and had he not suppo- 
sed the American Anti-Slavery Society to be al- 
so a Peace Society, he never should have joined 
it. A discussion ensued respecting the declara- 
tion of sentiment and constitution of the Society. 
Some thought the Peace principles were invol- 
ved in them, some not, according to their different 
ideas of the extent of these principles. > 

The discussion had continued two hours, when 
Mr. Garrison arose. " Brethren," he said, " you 
all know my views on this subject. They cover 
the extreme ground of non-resistance, and so, in 
my understanding of it, does this resolution. Let 
me say to Brother Goodell, that I think he, on 
further thought, would not wish to adopt it, nei- 
ther do I think the Assembly ready to pass it. 
This is neither the place nor the occasion. Let 
us stop discussing it now." The resolution was 
moulded into the shape of a re-aifirmaiion of pacif- 
ic principles, as set forth in the Declaration of 
sentiment of the National Convention in 1033, 



25 



and in that modified form unanimously adopt- 
ed. 

Many of the members of this meeting had 
their minds firmly anchored on tlie ultra non- 
resistance principle. They saw it through 
their abolition principles, as the eye fastens 
upon the farthest surface of a diamond through 
the transparent medium of the nearest ; yet 
they felt that it was not the business of Anti- 
Slavery organizations as such, to come to a de- 
cision upon it, and they were desirous to wave 
its consideration. Who could have foretold that 
these very pcM'sons, and Mr. Garrison in particu- 
lar, were hereafter to be arrnigned as loading the 
cause with foreign topics ? 

Up to this point of time, May, 1837, the hearts 
of the abolitionists were united as the heart of 
one. Exceptions did exist to the general love 
and harmony, but they were very rare. As a 
general rule, the mobs, mfsrepresentations, and 
threats of prosecution at common law, seemed to 
unite them the closer. Each strove to shelter 
the rest from whatever storm of opposition they 
w^ere called to share. They defended each other 
from the charge of harsh and unchristian feelings 
and language — they called for, and recorded 
3 



26 



the votes of women — they unanimously declared 
in solemn assembly, that they, as abolitionists, 
believed that the anti-slavery cause was one, with 
regard to which all human beings, whether men 
or women, citizens or foreigners, white or colored, 
had ihQ same duties and the same rights — they 
passed resolutions of thanks for the co-operation 
of women, under the unusual and difficult duties 
that devolved upon them. In vain were the noise 
of the waves, and the tumult of the people; they 
broke harmlessly against this rock-founded for- 
tress. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 



Christian. Did you know, about ten years ago, one Tempo- 
rary, wlio dwelt next door to one Turnback 1 Siuce we are 
talkiii>» al)oiit liim, let us a little inquire into the reason of the 
SU(!<len backsliding of him and such others. 

Hopeful. It may be profitable. BUNYAN. 



THEre-actlon of the cliurcb, in consequence of 
such an efFoit as the one made by this Convention, 
was greater than some who had fancied themselves 
abolitionists were able to bear. Compelled to 
choose between their pro-slavery brethren of the 
church and ministry and their brethren of the ab- 
olition cause, they shrunk from the latter. Their 
efforts to justify themselves in cramping the cause, 
that they might avoid its reproach, constitute an 
era in its progress, known as the '^ Boston Contro- 
versy." The plan originated with five clergymen of 
Boston and vicinity, the Rev.Messrs. Charles Fitch, 
Joseph H. Towne, Jonas Perkins, David Sand- 



28 



ford, and William Cornell. AVhen the ecclesiasti- 
cal tumult swelled high, their hearts were stirred 
up with it, as the water of inland wells is said to 
rise and fall with the ebb and flow of the bitter 
ocean tide wdthout. 

Tlieir appeal commenced with an acknowledg- 
ment of the sins of their brethren, in the use of 
harsh language, and an accusation of the most prom- 
inent abolitionists, of an unkind, improper and un- 
christian course, as such, assuming as one of the 
principles of action in the cause, that it must not 
be presented in a " brother's pulpit," when by so 
doing a brother might be aggrieved. This last as- 
sumption was in direct contradiction to the motto 
of every pulpit, as well as in defiance of the pro- 
fessed principles of every christian minister to "cry 
aloud and spare not " in the promulgation of truth, 
and '' to show the people their transgressions," — 
" whether they will hear, or whether they will for- 
bear." 

The accusation of harsh language was robbed of 
its power by the heavily charged and indiscrimi- 
nate epithets which som.e of the appellants them- 
selves were accustomed to use. Having no stand- 
ard within themselves by which to graduate their 
language, the quality of their labors was regulat- 



29 



edby the market principle of demand and supply. 
The respective churches in Boston, to which two 
of them had been called from the country to min- 
ister, had more fame (or infamy, as the world count- 
ed it) on account of abolition, than they deserved. 
The appellants soon ascertained that the market was 
fluctuating, and they also fluctuated and fell. Ig- 
norant of the general temperature of the abolition 
mind without, they fancied it in corres[)ondence 
with that under their immediate observation, and 
took the ill-considered step of appealing before 
the world from the requisitions of their own ac- 
knowledged principles of action with regard to the 
preaching of acknowledged truth. 

It iTwist be remembered, in excuse of clergymen 
who in this stage of the cause put their hands to 
the plough and turned back, that the laudable de- 
sire of the National Society to have the field filled 
with agents had induced some to enter it whose prep- 
aration of heart was altogether unequal to the work. 
They yielded to circumstances and to entreaties, 
rather than to convictions of duty and love of the 
cause. Some too had been prematurely urged 
into the anti-slavery ranks by the anxiety of the 
women of their respective congregations to obtain 
the influence of their names for the cause. This 



30 



practice of making th.ose life members who are but 
slightly interested in the cause, however well cal- 
culated to swell the funds of popular societies, and 
secure the efforts of the ministry in their favor, 
has been productive of nothing but mischief in An- 
ti Slavery Societies, and it Is to be hoped that no 
persons will hereafter be subjected to the painful 
alternative of accepting a testimoay of regard of 
which they are unworthy, or of acknowledging en- 
mity to the cause of Freedom. Let no one be 
constituted a life member, wljose own heart has 
not so wrought upon his life as to make it clear 
that his membership is something more than a 
payment of fifteen dollars. 

The clerical appeal was, in fact, an invitation 
to the leaders of the opposing host of clergymen, 
to come and take llie direction of the Anti-Slavery 
cause. The former character of its signers as ab- 
olitionists — their confident tone, and the sudden- 
ness of the movement, drew^ general attention and 
remark. A lively sensation ensued throughout 
New England. 

The appellants reported that they were cheer- 
ed on by nine tenths of their brother clergymen. 
This increased the agitation ; for the ribolitionists 
liad found, from the beginning, their most active 



31 



opponents among this class of men. Coming, as 
it did, immediately after the claim of the Mass. Gen- 
eral Association of Ministers, for more respect and 
for the exelu.sion of agitating topics, the appeal 
identified its originators with the opposing minis- 
try, and disjoined them from abolitionists. It was 
already seen of all, that this new principle of sup- 
pressing the truth when the truth gives offence, 
would, if generally adopted, completely extinguish 
the Anti-Slavery cause. Merchants, who had 
received hints that they were to be hissc^d off 
'Change, for bringing their principles into daily 
practice, — lawyers, whose clients had deserted 
them in disgust when the pictures of kneeling 
slaves found room in their places of business, — 
women, who had been proscribed from their re- 
spective social circles for making a morning call 
the medium of presenting a petition, — all per- 
ceived that this case was the parallel of their 
own, and demanded of a clergyman that he 
should resist his temptations to a sinful neglect of 
■duty as well as themselves. They also exclaim- 
ed against the unworthy idea of yielding up, on 
demand, those whose very faithfulness was the 
origin of all the outcry. A whisper was circu- 
lated by the friends of the clerical appeal, that 



32 



struggle was useless, that they were sustained not 
only without but within the camp, that the Ex- 
ecutive Committee at New York did not disap- 
prove of their doings, and that it had been decid- 
ed at head quarters '' to cast off Garrison.^^ 
This facihtated the genei-al movement of every 
eye to New York. Societies and individuals 
loudly protested against the treachery to the 
cause, the treachery to their own religious pritici- 
ples of action, and the treachery to their confi- 
rades of which the appeal w^as the vehicle. — 
The religious world, through all its various organs 
of communication with the universal public, set 
up a shout of triumph. From Maine to the Po- 
tomac, and from the Alantic to the Ohio, the 
'' Appeal" was the subject of conversation with 
all to whom the name of abolition was familiar. 
The Anti-Slavery editors in every state, discerned 
the spiritual peril as clearly as If it had been a 
combat before the bodily eye, and all spoke out 
for the right, except the Emancipator, the organ 
of the Committee at New York, and James G. 
BIrney, then editor of the Philanthropist in Cln- 
cinatl. His misappreliension of the case was ex- 
cused by those whom he condemned, and ac- 
counted for by the fact of his great distance from 



sa 



the seat of the conflict. The appellants, however, 
triumphantly claimed him as their own. Mr. 
Garrison, and the editor pro tern, of the Libera- 
tor, Mr. Johnson, were forcible and conclusive in 
their treatment of the case. Mr. Phelps, whose 
services as general agent of the Massachusetts 
Society, some members of the Boston Female 
Anti- Slavery Society forseeing this emergency, 
had made great exertions to secure, came boldly 
up, to fill the breach where his presence was so 
needful and desirable. The vigor of his assault 
quickly dislodged the appellants from their new 
position "■ in a brother's pulpit." But he receiv- 
ed no thanks for his good service, from the com- 
mittee at New York. Every church, every Anti- 
Slavery Society, was convulsed by the struggle — 
slill no voice came from the central citadel. 
The Clerical appellants meanwhile went en, as 
diverging lines ever will, widening the distance 
between themselves and rectitude. The Massa- 
chusetts Association of tlie Ministry had, two 
months previously, given currency to the idea 
that the abolition cause had wrought deterioration 
in the female character. The appellants made 
this idea, too, their own. Mr. Woodbury, now 
an agent of the American Society, the same who 



34 



fiad thrown down the gauntlet to the pro- slavery 
church in 1836, chimed in with the appeal, and 
suggested in addition, that the opinions of Mr. 
Garrison on other subjects were just cause of 
offence in him, and that their incidental expres- 
sion in the Liberator was a high misdemeanor. 
The appellants eagerly adopted this suggestion 
also; and explained to the public, and endeavor- 
ed to convince abolitionists, that the toleration 
of women as free agents in the cause — the hold- 
ing George Fox's views of the Sabbath — or em- 
bracing the principles of non-resistance, afforded a 
just ground for excluding the offending individu- 
als from the Societies. " Let them go out from 
among us,'' they said, '•' for they are not of us ; 
and the Massachusetts Society must have a new 
organ." Mr. Phelps, at this time standing under 
a load of ignominy with the leaders of his denom- 
ination, and publicly threatened by the Recorder, 
their periodical, that Mr. Garrison's " brother 
Phelps " would soon find his present position an 
unenviable one, succumbed to this new shape of 
an attack, which, under its first guise, he had met 
so boldly. Like the prince of Arabian story, he 
yielded to the insulting outcries which burst out 
around him, — turned his face from the ascent, 



35 



and at that moment underwent the transformation 
to which the prince's change into a little black 
stone by the way-side, is analogous. 

It is astonishing that these men should not have 
been aware that on the abolition platform their own 
sect stood but on a level with others, and that 
Sabbatarian or Anti-Sabbatarian, man or woman, 
clergyman or layman, voter or non-voter, warrior 
or non-resistant, must be measured by their con- 
sistency and energy in applying each his own 
religious views, to effect the abolition of slave- 
ry. But they had yielded to that fear of man 
that bringeth a snare, and suffered themselves to 
be overcome by pro-slavery influence, scantily 
disguised as sectarian zeal. 

This pro-slavery influence was wielded by the 
leaders of the sect to which the appellants belong- 
ed, with a skill and industry which the Anti- 
Slavery party would have done well to imitate. 
This pretended zeal, stimulated as it was by the 
hope of securing the approbation of wealthy and 
influential men of business, who sustained the 
double character of panders of slavery and pillars 
of churches, was not without its reward. The 
leading commercial and religious journals played 
into each others' hands, and, from the daily and 



36 



weekly press of that period, it appears that great 
numbers of clergymen.''of known hosiility to the 
cause, had contrived to signify that some move- 
ment of this kind would afford them a pretence 
for joining it, \^hile, at the same time, such a 
movement would operate £s an assurance that the 
cause should no longer be urged forward with 
the speed and effect that rouses the spirit of per- 
secution. Men who had dreaded suffering, and 
felt mortification at the idea of becoming follow- 
ers (so they understood it) of the bold, plain, 
uncompromising, untitled Garrison, hoped, by 
means of this stepping-stone, to escape the re- 
proach of their consciences, without sacrificing 
their parishes or their pride. 

The active appellants were but two in number ; 
but from time to time they kept the public inform- 
ed of the encouragement they received. One, 
who entered into their feelings with the most ar- 
dent sympathy, was the Rev. Charles T. Torrey, 
then of Providence. He declared that " their 
appeal gave him unmingled satisfaction — that it 
would be sustained by others ;" — and bade them 
^' thank God and take courage, in view of the 
Liberator's abuse." 

As weeks went on, it became evident, through 



37 



the columns of the paper in which the clerical ap- 
peal first appeared, that the cloak of bigotry and 
intolerance was to be added to the garment of 
sectarian zeal, which had at first been employed to 
hide their want of attachment to the cause. 
There was talk of a '^ common ground/' which 
yet must not be profaned by the leet of those ab- 
olitionists who w^ere not of one particular commun- 
ion. Great preference of the National Society- 
was expressed, (though it counted as many here- 
tics among its numbers as did the Massachusetts 
Society ;) because the members of the Executive 
Committee chanced to be members also of sects 
which the appellants considered Orthodox. Much 
exertion was made in the Theological Seminary, 
at Andover, to obtain recruits for this new, exclu- 
sive '^common ground," and thirty-nine young 
candidates for the ministerial office came up to its 
defence. 

Meanwhile, the claims of this clerical exclusive- 
ness were adjudged by the great body of abolition- 
ists, to be in an attitude of antagonism with the 
principles of Freedom. How can he free the 
slave, they argued, who is occupied in imposing 
fetters upon the free ? How can he love liberty ^ 
who is acting in defiance of her first principles ^ 
4 



38 



Are not things which are equal to the same things 
equal to one another ? 

The Massachusetts Society met at Worcester, 
to take action upon this attempt to destroy its 
broad foundation of religious freedom and tolera- 
tion : and, disclaiming the exercise of judgment, 
in their associated capacity, upon any man's pri- 
vate opinions, the members deemed it their duty 
to brand inconsistency with one's oic7i standard of 
action, as treachery to the cause. 

Amasa Walker, a man peculiarly qualified to 
speak to such a question, being a zealous member 
of the same sect as the appellants, manifested, up- 
on this occasion,* rectitude and steadfastness wor- 
thy of a sect so nobly founded, and, until the 
present day, so nobly sustained. He explained 
the causes and developed the real character of the 
appeal, stripping it of its mask of love for the 
slave, and zeal for the church of God. 

Dr. Osgood, of Springfield, was disposed to ad- 
mit the justice of the charge of harsh language 
against prominent abolitionists, but he made an 
exception in favor of Mr. Birney. He thought 
himself as thorough as it was possible for any man 
to be in the cause. He had labored for its suc- 
cess where5-er he went. •'• I have/'' said he, 



39 



*^ pleaded for it in stage-coaches and steam-boats. 
I have argued in its behalf in conversation. / 
have never yet introduced it into my pulpit : — if I 
had done so, I should have grieved away some of 
my best people.'* 

A condemnation was, notwithstanding, express- 
ed against the idea that one man's wishes or sense 
of propriety, are the proper measure of the rights 
and duties of another. 

Being thus hindered in their attempt to change 
the nature and foundation principles of the 
Massachusetts Society, the appellants strove to 
destroy it by forming a new organization on the 
basis of sectarianism, to be auxiliary to the Na- 
tional Society. JMr. Phelps, though somewhat 
disappointed at the result of the whole campaign, 
in the utter discomfiture of clerical abolitionism, 
and vexed that the Massachusetts abolitionists 
insisted upon evidence of repentance from the cler- 
ical appellants, before again placing confidence in 
them, was still not quite prepared to relinquish 
his hold upon the old society. 

This unwillingness was strengthened by the fact, 
that the strings of management of the new one were 
not proffered to his hands. When he learned 
that the call for a convention to form it was not a 



40 



free and general one, but limited to those who were 
quite decided to quit the Massachusetts Society, 
and that the important arrangements were all to 
be settled beforehand, and only the trifling details 
left to the discretion of the Convention ; then, 
and not till then, he publicly warned abolitionists 
against putting themselves to the trouble of "do- 
ing up Mr. Somebody's details," and expressed 
the hope that the few towns in the Commonwealth 
that had responded to the new movement, might re- 
main as they were, a few. Orange Scott, one of the 
most conspicuous of the Methodist abolitionists, 
exclaimed against the narrow exclusive dividing 
spirit which was at work, and zealously defended 
the common cause from its attacks. 

Their advice, with the indefatigable labors of 
Mr. Garrison, cast a dam}) upon the embryo mis- 
chief But, excited, as Mr. Phelps's sympathies 
had been, for his clerical brethren, and alarmed as 
he had felt at the outcry of heresy they had rais- 
ed against Mr. Garrison, he could not go on in the 
work, as aforetime, with a free, untroubled soul. 
He had previously entered into a correspondence 
with Professor Smyth, of Maine, a friend of the 
clerical appeal, respecting the necessity of reform- 
ing the Massachusetts Society of its characteristic 



41 



freedom, and the means by which that reform 
could be effected without alarming the sagacious 
watchfulness of Mr. Garrison ;^ and at the annu 
al meeting of the Massachusetts Society, warmly 
opposed that part of the annual report which con- 
demned the appeal as treacherous to the cause. 
Events seldom pass for what they are worth, 
at the time they transpire ; and these signs and 
tokens 



■which denoted 



A hot friend cooling, " 

seemed inconsequential to most of those who ob- 
served them. The abolitionists had reposed un- 
bounded confidence in Mr. Phelps, and could not 
brook to have their souls darkened by suspicion of 
one so well beloved. In watching the train of 
human events, how often are we admonished to 
praise no man unreservedly while yet he lives ; — 
to rest our hearts upon no human excellence that is 
not 

''Hallowed, and guarded from all change by death." 



* Clergymen, he intimated, must not be put forward to do it, 
as in thar case Mr. Garrison would have a handle by which to re- 
pel the attempt; but laymen must be sought out and employed for 
the purpose. 

4* 



42 



We must pause here, and settle in our mem- 
ories the positions of individuals and societies at 
this period, if we would understand the times 
which come after. We must take the bear- 
ings and distances of the cause in 1637, if we 
would possess a chart for our safe guidance 
among the shoals and quicksands of 1839. 

First, let us note the position of the Execu- 
tive Committee at 'New York. Blind to the 
crisis or unequal to it, they labored to preserve 
neutrality in a case involving the preservation or 
the sacrifice of principle; and pronounced the 
•whole affair to be " entirely local — a mere Boston 
controversy." Of the three tests of fidelity, they 
stood firm under the application of but two. 
They were untrue to principles in keeping silence 
at such a moment, but they were not positively 
and openly faithless to men, and they vindicated 
the broad platform of the original Anti-Slavery 
agreement. They perceived the derangement 
that a hostile and prescriptive organization in Mas- 
sachusetts would occasion in the whole Anti-Slave- 
ry system oforganized action and did not recognize 
any such society as a part of the afHhation. 
But the feebleness that marked their course, at that 
trying crisis, deprived them of the perfect love 



43 



and confidence that had till then been felt in them 
by all the abolitionists. This feebleness and neu- 
trality was, however, a recommendation to those 
whose estimation is a dispraise. The opposcr 
of the cause instinctively felt that, W'itliout any 
change in his own position, the distance between 
himself and the New York Committee was some- 
what lessened : while the devoted friends were 
made aware that that committee, notwithstanding 
its activity in keeping in motion the smaller ma- 
chinery of the cause, and its ability in conduct- 
ing the tract and book department, was yet the 
weak point of the whole Anti-Slavery array. 
All attentive beholders, whether friends or foes, 
were taught, by the observation of this period, 
that the machinery of organization, with all its 
systematized and mechanical helps, must be utter- 
ly unequal to obtain emancipation, unless freedom 
be the moving " spirit w-ithin the wheels; " — that, 
however efficient may be the appliances and 
means that money can set in motion, there are 
moments wdien one trumpet-blast of victorious 
truth, were worth them all. The friends in 
Massachusetts in vain continued to " look south- 
ward with upbraiding eye ;" — there was no voice 
nor any that answered to their condemnation of 



44 



the base metal which could not stand the furnace 
of the times. They therefore made their own 
expression of opinion the more emphatic, and 
their own testimony the more clear. 

The Boston Female Society bore faithful wit- 
ness to the truth, notwithstanding the reluctance 
of its President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and 
Recording Secretary. These officers ran well 
while they fancied the enterprise under the bless- 
ing and direction of a portion of the ministry. 
But, no sooner did it appear that they must ad- 
vance alone and self-sustained, than they turned 
to flight, and from that moment became, in their 
measure, an obstacle to the cause, and a detri- 
ment to the society hitherto so active. 

Let us give one more glance at the position of 
mdividuals at this period. 

The appellants, recreant to the three grounds 
of fidelity in the Anti-Slavery cause, fidelity to 
the principles — to the platform — and to their 
comrades, were announcing their intention to 
weep in secret places. Mr. Phelps, faithful to 
the first ground, but treacherous to the two last, 
was endeavoring, unknown to his comrades of the 
Massachusetts Board, to change the original 
character of the Society, and at the same time to 



45 



sustain the office of its General Agent. Mr. Stan- 
ton, the most prominent Agent of the New York 
Committee in Massachusetts, was wanting to the 
fundamental principle of immediateism, in keeping 
silence on \he Jirst ground of the appeal ; — to the 
mutual agreement that all sects were, in the Anti- 
Slavery cause, on a common platforn), in keeping 
silence on the second ground of the appeal ; and 
to his brethren personally, in silently seeing them 
attacked without standing with them on the de- 
fensive. Instead of this three-fold fidehty, he 
was declaring it to be impossible to " screw every 
body up to'this high notch ;" and therefore it had 
better not be attempted, as the work would be 
done at last by men who had not this devoted 
love for the cause, from political and interested 
motives ; and that the requisition of higher ones, 
would certainly occasion division. The faithful 
in the cause were earnestly urging him, and all 
who were thus wanting to the right, to insist 
on the most impregnable fidelity and the most 
unshaken constancy, as the only aid worth having, 
and the only means of holding the mastery over 
policy and selfishness ; and solemnly warning him 
that, when that division, to which he alluded, 
should take place, the short-sighted, the weak, the 



46 



faltering, the treacherous, the unprincipled, the 
base, would fall back together ; while the deep- 
thinking, the strong, the resolute, the faithful, 
the well-grounded, the noble-souled, would close 
up and press onward. 

The position of the Massachusetts Society 
only remains to be considered. It ceased to de- 
fray the expenses of the Liberator from its treas- 
ury, though most of the members would have re- 
joiced to continue to do so. But they respect- 
ed the consciences of the minority, very few as 
they believed those to be who honestly opposed 
the paper, and determined, since freedom only 
could obtain freedom, at all events to avoid the 
absurdity of infringing on religious liberty. 

They concurred with Mr. Garrison in the 
opinion that the efficacy of the paper and the 
consistency of the society would be best preserv- 
ed by the cessation of the pecuniary connection, 
if it gave pain or embarrassment to the mind of a 
single contributor to the funds. 

This did not greatly mend the matter to those 
who profaned the sacred name of conscience, by 
making it a cloak for malice and for weakness. 
Still Mordecai sat in the king's gate — still it was 
the abolition of Massachusetts which sustained 
the Liberator. 



47 



The Society received the natural reward of its 
faithfuhiess, in the increase of its strength. Full 
of cheerful constancy, and reposing undiminished 
confidence in its General Agent, whose short-com- 
ings were known to but few, it pursued its course, 
rejoicing in freedom, with renewed determination 
to impart her life-giving influence to the enslaved. 
At the annual meeting of the National Society, 
an arrangement was made to obviate that clash- 
ing of the fiscal concerns and the interference of 
agents with each other's track, which had been so 
troublesome from the first. By this arrangement, 
no agents were to labor in Massachusetts but in 
connection with the wishes of the State Board of 
officers, and under their direction. With this 
understanding, ten thousand dollars, were to be 
raised during the year, in this State, in quarterly 
payments, for ^le central treasury at New York. 
Having thus cast aside every weight- and besetting 
sin, the society girt itself afresh, to run with pa- 
tient swiftness the race set before it. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE PLOT. 



Our plot is as good a plot as ever was laid ; our friends true and 
constant ; a good plot, good friends, and full of expectations : an 
excellent plot; very good friends. * * * Why my lord of YORK 
comnjends the plot, and the general course of the action. 

Shakspeare. 



The difficulties of writing the history of the past, 
are greatly enhanced by the scantiness of the ma- 
terials : our own contemporaneous history on the 
contrary, seems clogged with their abundance. 
So many simultaneous events, seemingly of small 
consequence, yet all having an important bearing 
on each other, and proving, in reality, the hinges 
on which the more conspicuous ones turn ; — so 
many threads, which the insufficiency of narra- 
tion at once to combine, compels the writer to 
drop for a time, although he must finally travel 
back to pick them up, or the connections of things 
will but imperfectly appear; — no wonder if the 
Mexican method of preserving the memory of 



49 



events by pictures, should seem preferable to our 
own. A succession of paintings seems capable of 
■presenting a much clearer view of contemporane- 
ous transactions, than any arrangement of pages. 
" Narrative is linear — action is solid ;" and we 
must overcome the difficulties of conveying the 
latter through means of the former, as best we may. 
The spirit of Freedom had, by the energy of its 
advent, struck terror into the world that compre- 
hended it not. The attempts to check its advance 
by means of mobs, were but as the spur in a vic- 
torious charge. The policy of the foes of Free- 
dom became more subtle. It was now their aim, 
by counterfeiting the voice of truth, by continual- 
ly substituting a false issue for the real one, and 
by assuming the guise of zeal for the institutions 
of religion and government, to operate influential- 
ly and as a check upon the abolition mjnd. — 
Though their first attempt, developed in the pre- 
ceding chapter, was, on the whole, a signal failure, 
owins: to the devoted love of abolitionists for their 

o 

cause and for each otlier, yet the haired of the 
New England opposition seeixed to deepen as the 
increase of light and love exposed its malignity. 
The position of the ministry, generally, grew more 
and more uneasy, as the discrepancy between their 
5 



50 



claims as ambassadors of Christ, and the character 
of their hves as opposed to the requisitions of his 
gospel, became apparent. 

They had, from tlie very commencement of the 
agitation, professed themselves abolitionists in the 
abstract, and met the charge of inconsistency in 
their practice by strong disapprobation of Mr. Gar- 
rison. One might have thought, from their repre- 
sentations, that Mr. Garrison possessed a power 
over their course, by which he could actually hin- 
der them from doing right. They addressed them- 
selves to the w^ork of communicating their own 
prejudices to the minds of their congregations, and 
greatly misrepresented both Mr. Garrison and the 
Liberator. The most false and derogatory reports 
were circulated as to his Christian and moral char- 
acter. His blameless and excellent life nullified 
these efforts with all wdioknew him ; but it is not 
wonderful that they should have taken effect in 
minds at a distance, whose only avenues to infor- 
mation were the ones which this malicious course 
choked up. It was unhesitatingly affirmed that 
the object of the Liberator w as to abolish the office 
of the ministry ; though its pages were searched in 
vain for any evidence of such an object. Noth- 
ing could there be found but proofs that slavery 



51 



had disqualified the great majority of the incum- 
bents of that office from exercising it. 

It was triumphantly told that the Massachusetts 
Society had dropped the Liberator — that Mr. Gar- 
rison was a Fanny Wright man — an infidel — a 
Sabbaih-breaker — a bad and dangerous man — 
promulgating the doctrines of the French Jacob- 
ins, he. &LC. 

An outcry was raised by the enemy without the 
camp, which was responded to by the confeder- 
ates within, that Mr. Garrison was loading the 
cause with a burden of extraneous topics. AlLthe 
careful observers of the movement were aware of 
the falsity of this allegation, and testified to his 
habitual avoidance of such topics in Anti-Slavery 
meetings. 

In fact, such discussions were always introduced 
by those who complained of them the loudest. 
All the anti-slavery editors were in the allowed 
practice of incidentally introducing their own re- 
ligious and other opinions, notwithstanding their 
papers were the organs of State Societies, and 
therefore bound to more caution. But it was made 
a subject of accusation against Mr. Garrison when 
he did the same, though his paper was his own, 
and he introduced no subjects into it unless they 



59 



had a practical bearing on the cause, and were at 
the same time considered debateable in all sects. 
Others might introduce column after column of 
extraneous matter: he was publicly accused, for 
a single line. Special efforts were made to induce 
men to cease to subscribe for tlie Liberator. It 
was, like Socrates, termed a corrupter of youth. 
Men of high ecclesiastical standing declared that 
they, though *' as much abolitionists as any one 
else," would never unite with the movement for 
abolition, as long as Mr. Garrison led the van. 

The Rev. Joel Hawes, D. D., of Connecticut, 
was one of these. Judging of them from their om- 
inous silence, when sectarianism had been most vi- 
olent in its attacks on the integrity of the cause, 
he felt a drawing towards the Executive Commit- 
tee at New York, and fancied them altogether 
such ones as himself. 

His adhesion had been hailed with joy by ab- 
olitionists. They soon found reason to know that 
such adherents are more ruinous than open ene- 
mies, to the cause they espouse. 

He travelled in Massachusetts, shortly after the 
New England Convention of 1838, memorable as 
the scene of the first attempt to exclude women 
from membership in anti-slavery meetings. 



53 



A number of clergymen of his own denomina- 
tion, headed by Mr. Torrey and Mr. Phelps, had 
most inconsistently labored to vote away the free- 
dom and the rights of the female members of that 
Convention. So indefinite were their ideas on 
the whole great subject of rights, that they over- 
looked the obvious thought, that no general anti- 
slavery convocation could take such ground with- 
out denying the fundamental principle that brought 
them together. In the horror of their great dark- 
ness on the subject of ^' woman'' s rights," they 
trampled on human rights, and the rights of mem- 
bership, in the persons of those women whom they 
labored to exclude. 

They also deeply w^ounded the feelings of the 
great body of the men there present ; few of whom 
but had occasion to acknowledge, with grateful af- 
fection and respect, how much a mother, wife or 
sister had done, in the difficult years that were 
past, to help and strengthen them in the labors and 
sacrifices of the cause. 

Women are so accustomed to suffering under 
the many indignities which men unconsciously in- 
flict, that in this instance they felt less keenly for 
themselves than ^ did their brethren for them, the 
tyrannical attempt to assume their responsibilities. 
5# 



54 



The refusal of the Convention to eject them 
from their seats, with the excellent memorial of 
its Committee, Mr. Johnson, Miss Kelley and Mr. 
St. Clair, to the ecclesiastical associations of New- 
England, excited much indignation among the 
ministry, with which Dr. Hawes was in a state of 
mind to sympathize. After his return to Connec- 
ticut, he stated, in a letter to a friend, that he 
had recently visited Massachusetts, and conversed 
with several leading abolitionists there: that in 
reference to the doings of the New England Con- 
vention, they declared that " they could no long- 
er work in such a team," and that, unless the 
Massachusetts Society would take ground in op- 
position to this action of the Convention, there 
must a7id should he a new organization. Dr. 
Hawes added, that if he resided in Massachusetts 
he should, be with them in favor of such a move- 
ment. 

One spark of true love of Freedom — the feeb- 
lest real desire to impart it to the enslaved, would 
have overpowered, in his heart, this spirit of the 
clerical appeal, and forbade him to identify him- 
self with any such effort to subvert the broad 
foundations of the cause or to exclude any who 
had borne the burden and heat of the earlier abo- 
lition dav. 



55 



Notwithstanding all the efforts of calumnyj big- 
otry and tyranny, Mr. Garrison still led the van. 
There was no help for it. It was a necessity grow- 
ing out of the nature of the case, and which could not 
be avoided, however much the foe might desire it, 
and the false friends labor to accommodate them. 
There is an efficacy in treacherous concealment, 
to ^'be-darken and confound the mind of man," 
or these Parleys and Flatterwells must have dis- 
cerned the philosophical impossibility. But, fail' 
ing to do so, they went on with their secret de- 
vices. 

In all these efforts, the friends of the clerical 
appeal joined with great zeal. They had announc- 
ed the intention of weeping in secret places, be- 
cause of its ill success. They were better than 
their word ; not only weeping, but laboring in se- 
cret places. Mr. Torrey, who had, in the mean 
time removed from Providence to Salem, was par- 
ticularly active. He instituted a vigorous secret 
correspondence to facilitate the establishment of 
a new anti-slavery paper in Massachusetts. He 
was now the Secretary of the Essex Co. Society, 
and, as such, used all the influence in his power 
to misrepresent and injure the Liberator; he inti- 
mated that Mr. Garrison had become insufierably 
idle and negligent, that his paper was left to print- 



56 



er's boys and any body to fill up, that it was de- 
moralizing in its tendency and miserably deficient 
in talent ; and in conformity with these declara- 
tions, he instructed the agents of the county soci- 
ety to recommend other papers in the towns 
where they labored. Having done this, he urged 
the necessity of a new paper, because there was 
such a prejudice against the Liberator, that it was 
impossible to get it into sufficient circulation, even 
to advertise the county meetings. 

He was aided in sowing the new-paper seed, by 
Mr. Phelps and Mr. St. Clair. The latter will be 
recollected as the neophyte of the Massachusetts 
Annual Meeting of 1 837. The apparent sincerity 
and heartiness of his appearance there had recom- 
mended him to an agency. His summary absolu- 
tion of all the- sins of the Liberator, past, present, 
and to come, was pardoned, as prompted by a good 
feeling, though too carelessly expressed."^ It seem- 
ed impossible to believe that he was insincere, 
though certainly indiscreet. 

In their progress through the country on anti- 
slavery missions, the agents of the Massachusetts 

* " Of Mr. Garrison I will say, as the Pope said of his minion, 
I will aljHolve him of all the sins he ever has committed, or ever 
will commit." — Speech of Mr. St. Clair in 1837. 



57 



Society never failed, from the beginning, to learn 
how hard it is to be reproached for a righteous 
man's name's sake. To appreciate the force of 
their temptation, let the beholder, for a moment, 
place himself in their situation. It is in the pow- 
er of the minister in almost every parish, to pro- 
cure them a hearinc:, — but he is in combination 
with his brethren to "put down Garrison." Is it 
wonderful that, instead of silencing the bigot or 
the slanderer with the assertion " he is a good 
man and a faithful abolitionist, and his opinions on 
other subjects are no more our business than your 
own," they should have striven to repel their as- 
sailants by endeavoring to draw aline of distinc- 
tion between him and themselves? Parallel to 
this was the course of Peter ; unrepented of, it 
deepens into the daiker dye that marks a Judas. 
When men who sought a pretence to avoid the 
consideration of the cause, were told that the 
Massachusetts Board of Managers differed as 
widely as themselves from Mr. Garrison's opin- 
ions on other subjects, their intolerance forbade 
them to credit the statement. If the Agents 
ventured to cast freely off, in the name of the 
Society, all responsibility for Mr. Garrison's indi- 
vidual opinjons, and to vindicate the rectitude and 



58 



energy of bis abolition course from tbe begining, 
they were obliged to endure the reproach of 
being " tools of Gairison," and singing his praises, 
when they should rather be employed in remov- 
ing such a stumbling-block out of the path of 
*^good men." A truly noble soul, thus spurred 
up to the encoupter, would have exclaimed in the 
spirit of Burger : — 

" Thank Heaven for song and praise, that I can 
Tlius sing the song of the faithful man !' 

The enemy, thus met, would have ceased to 
play so ineffectual a string ; but, perceiving the 
weakness of the agents of this year, he never 
ceased to have recourse to it. 

Let not those who have never been tried in 
such a furnace, condemn, without pardon and pity, 
those whose nobility of spirit was not equal to 
pass the assay. 

There appears to have been, on the part of Mr. 
Phelps, and the other agents of this period, an 
inability to comprehend or appreciate the just 
and straight-forward course of the Massachusetts 
Board, with whom they were associated, as 
well as a consciousness that it would never 
permit its sanction to be used for their purposes. 



59 



They therefore carefully kept their operations se- 
cret from the Board, while they were using its 
funds and sanction to carry them on, in conjunc- 
tion with Mr. Torrey, and Mr. Stanton, the Sec- 
retary of.the Executive Committee at New York. 
All the Summer and Autumn of 1838, the scheme 
for a new paper was thus secretly carried on. 
Mr. Torrey wrote afterwards to a friend, " the 
clergymen throughout the State have been sound- 
ed ; and ihey are for it.^ to a man." 

The plan of a new paper, to be under their 
own dictation, and in an attitude of opposition to 
the man and to the paper whom their misi'epre- 
sentations had made odious, could not fail to be 
approved by the ministry ; but to abolitionists, 
a different form of introduction was found neces- 
sary. To them it was represented that it would 
aid the Liberator, and that possibly Mr. Garrison 
might be induced to become the editor. Its com- 
parative cheapness, too, was an inducement to 
some honest minds, who were unaware of its pur- 
pose to effect a division in their ranks. 

More than a year had elapsed since the cleri- 
cal appeal conspiracy. Some of the apellants 
had become officers of county Societies. Cer- 
tain of their brethren in spirit, as well as in the 



60 



ministry, had taken the lead in town Societies ; — 
a creeping movement was in this way going on 
among them, to get the control of the organiza- 
tions ; andj co-operatins; with it, were the young 
theologians who had aided the old attempt figainst 
the cause ; now, some of them, as the occupants 
of pulpits, rejoicing in the opportunity to lend 
their aid to the new one. 

Mr. Phelps, in whom general confidence was 
yet unimpaired, was every where warm in his 
eulogies of Mr. Torrey's diligence in the cause. 
But those who had opportunities of observing his 
course closely, were made aware that mischief 
and diligence are by no means incompatible. 
His labors were unremitting to weaken the bonds 
of relationship between the County Society and 
the State Society. The abolitionists of Essex, 
generally, saw not the tendency and design of 
these efforts. They could be made without sus- 
picion, as the National Society had ever been a 
favorite with INIassachusetts men, with whom it 
originated, and who constitute the largest por- 
tion of its efficient members. Such men could 
not readily conceive of the possibility of acting 
in their Cow/i?^ capacity or their National capRc- 
ity, in opposition to themselves in their State 



61 



capacity. But the active brains of the Secretary 
of the Executive Committee at New York, to- 
gether with the Secretaries of the Massachusetts 
and the Essex County Societies, had devised and 
cherished the idea of such a change, though it 
would necessarily convert the affiliated Anli- 
Slavery system from a harmonious whole, into 
jarring and discordant divisions. A society had, 
before this, been formed in the western part 
of the State, to be directly auxiliary to the Na- 
tional Society. This circumstance was unnotic- 
ed at the time, except by a few, who waited for 
the light of future events by which to interpret 
its meaning. 

Such disunion and derangement could not be 
easily effected in the region where the free spirit 
first laid the broad foundations of its organized ac- 
tion. It was necessary to cast about for some 
plausible ground on which to create division of 
feeling, and to proceed upon it with the utmost 
caution. 

Public sentiment had become so far changed in 
Massachusetts by the eight years' waifare of abo- 
litionists, that ministers were almost as liable to 
public censure for an open pro-slavery course, as 
for an open advocacy of Freedom. They, of all 
6 



62 



men, were, in one sense, justified in the custom- 
ary declaration that they were " as much anti-sla- 
very as others;" for they kept careful watch of 
the times, that they might not vary from them 
materially. With all their prudence and caution, 
they found this double public a difficult monster 
to manage. Though, as a body, they had under- 
gone no change of feeling, they perceived that 
their efforts to check the progress of Freedom, 
must be made more carefully than ever ; and they 
adopted a tone of great solicitude for '' the poor 
slave." 

Pity, even when unfeigned, is not principle, 
any more than ^' American Union"* was anti-sla- 
very J and in'this instance " poor slave " was but 
the synonym for hostility to the Massachusetts So- 
ciety. Well has cant been called *'the second 
power of a lie." 

The additional ground on which a division of 
feeling preparatory to the projected outward di- 
vision was attempted, was the assertion, sedulous- 
ly disseminated by Mr. St. Clair, Mr. Torrey, Mr. 
^tanton, and Mr. Phelps, that the Massachusetts 
Society was a ^'no-government Society." Of 
this the only proof was, that it had not ostracised 

* A scheme so called, for benefiting the colored race, without 
giving offence by the mention of Freedom, or Human Rights. 



63 



Mr. Garrison. It was argued that the Constita- 
tion of the Massachusetts Society required the 
use of every means sanctioned by law, humanity 
and rehgion ; therefore Mr. Garrison and all other 
Non-Resistants who decline exercising the elec- 
tive franchise, were, by the terms of the Consti- 
tution, excluded from the Society. 

*' Political action," adverted to in the Constitu- 
tion, now had a new definition affixed to it. It 
was defined by one of this new school to mean 
poU-itical action, or action at the polls. 

This logic, though very efficacious among those 
who had rather see the battle rage round the polls 
than round the pulpit, produced but little effect 
on the real abolitionists. '^ Law and humanity 

and religion ;" they said " Well ! these must, 

by the Constitution of the Society, conjunctively 
agree upon the means to be employed, and each 
man was of course to be his own judge of their re- 
quisitions ; for there never would have been a 
Constitution or a Society on any other understand- 
ing. Law ! Well ; the law sanctions my restora- 
tion of a fugitive slave, should I deem such a pro- 
pitiation of the master likely to produce a happy 
effect in hastening a general emancipation. Am 
1 therefore bound to do it ? No ! for my human- 
ity and religion interpose their veto. But, what if 



64 



Mr. Garrison's humanity and religion forbid him 
to vote ? / cannot see why they should, but that's 
his look-out as an individual — not mine as an ab- 
olitionist : — and the Constitution of the Massa- 
chusetts Society covers us both." 

Such plain blunt reasonings could put to flight 
the assunipiion that voting at the polls was a test 
of memhership : but of course it did but increase 
the bitterness of feeling of those who sought a 
cause of offence against the Society, to find 
none. 

That Mr. Garrison was personally aimed at, 
and the Massachusetts Society also, because it 
would not consent to his ignominious expulsion, 
no one doubled, who was at the receipt of cler- 
ical custom. The on dits were plentiful, au- 
thenticated and conclusive. " Garrison has too 
much influence," said one. *' We must take 
it down little by little." " Have you got Garrison 
down yet ?" said another ; " we are ready to come 
in when he is out of the w-ay." "All the Mas- 
sachusetts meetings are mere Garrison-glorifi- 
cations," said a third ; '^ they forget the poor 
slave.^^ *' Oh, the Massachusetts Society is the 
mere creature of Garrison," said a fourth. " So 
many good abolitionists as there are in the State, 



65 



opposed to him, why not get rid of him at once?" 
said the outside row. ^'All in good time — a new 
paper first, as the organ of the Society — and we 
can make advantageous changes in the Board of 
Managers also, as they wish to resign," — rephed 
the inner circle, that were most closely hemming 
round the Massachusetts Society, with hostility in 
the disguise of friendship. 

Charitable judgment is an excellent thing. 
Possibly, Arnold thought that the revolution- 
ary principles might be promoted by giving 
up Washington to the discontents of the factious, 
and the demands of the foe ; and exactly the same 
possibility exists that these men of great profes- 
sions and hitherto unattainted names, were sincere 
blunderers, — not treacherous apostates. An ex- 
cellent thing in its place, Is charitable judgment. 
Whether its place be to refuse to see or to sum up 
evidence, admits of controversy. 

The accusations against the Massachusetts So- 
ciety, however, appeared, on evidence, to be un- 
founded. Its Board of Managers had issued an 
address to abolitionists preparatory to the political 
campaign, and had concentrated their agents upon 
the fourth Congressional District, where the po- 
litical parties were so nicely matched against each 
6* 



66 



other, that the abolitionists, though but the dust 
of the balance, might, it was hoped, by successive 
defeats of the election, at length procure a candi- 
date from one or the other party on whom they 
could unite. This one fact of the personal labors 
and concentration of effort for political effect on 
the part of the Managers of the Society, present- 
ed itself to every mind and neutralized the mis- 
representations that were so industriously circu- 
lated. In reality, the whole force of the Society 
had been bent to this one point ; and the Board, 
knowing that the County Societies were deeply 
pledged in the matter of funds, relied upon aboli- 
tionists in their county capacity to raise the mon- 
ey now due to the National Society, on the Mas- 
sachusetts pledge. 

At this juncture, one of the faithful friends in 
Andover, was startled by the reception of a letter 
from Mr. Torrey, so explicit as to rouse him at 
once to a perception of the meaning and tenden- 
cies of things, which, till then, had escaped his 
notice. The letter dwelt on the great influence of 
Mr. Garrison in Massachusetts, and thence ar- 
gued that it would not be safe to attack him or 
the Liberator openly ; — on the great need of a 
new paper ; — w4iich he, (Mr. TorreyJ had as- 



67 



certained by sounding the clergymen throughout 
the State ; and they were for it to a man. " Now, 

Brother , have on a full delegation at the 

Annual Meeting, at 10 o'clock in the morning, 
prepared to stay two days. Have them pledged 
to go for the new paper, and to spai' the annual 
report, and we will show them how it is done." 

Upon the reception of this letter, those who 
had been wont to keep watch and ward over 
the interests of the cause in Essex, met and 
decided to communicate instantly with other 
friends, that, if possible, the evil might be sub- 
dued in this stage of its progress. 

Dr. Fa rns worth, of Middlesex, with whose own 
observation and experience their intelligence har- 
monized, instantly suggested to Mr. Garrison the 
idea of removing all their pretensions for such a 
paper by issuing a small cheap sheet of exclu- 
sively Anti-Slavery matter. Mr. Garrison, from 
whom, though in almost daily communication 
with Mr. Phelps, Mr. St. Clair and Mr. Stanton, 
their whole plan had been carefully kept, could 
hardly credit so treacherous a proceeding. 

Had an honest desire for a new paper been en- 
tertained, Ae, surely, whose note of joyous exulta- 
tion had welcomed the appearance of every new^ 



68 



anti-slavery periodical, should have been among 
the first whose aid was sought; and, that the plan 
had not reached his ears, seemed to him to prove 
conclusively, that at least those brethren of the 
Society with whom he had daily intercourse, could 
not be engaged in it. Relying on Dr. Farns- 
worth's good judgment, he, however, decided to 
issue the specimen number of the periodical prO' 
posed. 

But, as day after day brought fresh proof of a 
skilfully arranged plan of secret action against the 
Massachusetts Society, his mind misgave him as 
to the efficiency of any paper he might issue, to 
stay its progress, and he relinquished the idea. 

Dr. Farnsworth, meanwhile, receiving no infor- 
mation of this, continued diligently to prepare the 
way in Middlesex County for the expected sheet. 
Of those labors, the enemies of the Liberator took 
advantage, and artfully represented his honest ef- 
forts for a paper which should subserve the pend- 
ing election, and, at the same time remove all pre- 
tence for setting on foot an influence hostile to the 
Liberator, as a part of their own plan. 

Singular symptoms were noticed in the politi- 
cal management of the Fourth District. Without 
consulting either the Massachusetts or the Middle^ 



69 



sex County Board, Mr. Stanton undertook the 
task of determining on whom the abolitionists 
should scatter their votes. Somewhat remark- 
able was his selection of the Rev. J. T. Wood- 
bury,— the man who, in 1836, had thrown 
doun tlie gauntlet to the pro-slavery church; 
and, in 1837, lacked the moral force to sustain 
the pressure of the antagonism he had impul- 
sively sought ; the man against whose com- 
mission as a local agent by the New York Exec- 
utive Committee, the Massachusetts Board for- 
mally remonstrated when they found him a par- 
ticipant in the clerical appeal. 

Deeper solicitude for the cause would have 
shown him that men who fail In the "cushioned 
seat ecclesiastical," cannot faithfully discharge the 
equally weighty responsibilities of the Congres- 
sional one. The evil considerations that tempting- 
ly beset the latter, are as numerous — their angelic 
disguises as complete. But Mr. Stanton's own 
course, dining that year, had not been such as to 
make his soul more keenly alive to the sacred 
beauty of fidelity. 

Dv. Farnsworth's continually increasing knowl- 
edge of the machinations now on foot, increased 
his sense of the necessity of a counteracting influ- 



70 



ence ; and, with a faithfulness which was undamp- 
ed by the apparent neglect which had met his first 
warning, he continued to urge on the members of 
the Massachusetts Board, the necessity of a new 
cheap periodical, as their organ, to be edited by 
Mr. Garrison ; monthly if they thought best, though 
inhis judgment a u'ee/c/y issue would more effectual- 
ly remove the pretences of those who were laboring 
for the destruction of the Liberator. 

When this proposition was formally presented 
to the Board by Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phelps chanced 
to be absent ; but Mr. Eayrs, a member with 
whom Mr. Phelps was on terms of confidence 
which he did not extend to all the other members, 
remarked that it would be better to postpone any 
action of this kind, as there would probably be 
changes in the Board at the annual meeting. 
So innocent were some of the members of the 
Board of any knowledge of what was practising 
against them, and so repugnant was suspicion to 
their natures, that those of them whose eyes had 
not been recently opened by personal experiences, 
honestly supposed that such a paper might satis- 
fy the alleged demand ; and, after a few days' de- 
lay, on account of Mr. Phelps's absence, it was de- 
cided to issue three thousand copies of a specimen 



71 



number, Messrs. Garrison, Phillips and Quincy 
to be an editorial committee. On learning this, 
Mr. Phelps said, with much agitation, that such a 
paper would by no means answer the demand. 
His words and his manner were a sufficient assur- 
ance that the plot had gone too far to be arrested 
by any possible effort of the Massachusetts Board, 
and all their energies were now bent to the pain- 
ful task of hastening its complete development. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE WARNING. 



The task o[ such an editor, Mr. President, ia an arduous and 
tliauUless one. He must shield his friends by mcjvemenis for wliich 
they will be apt to censure hin). He must save the cause by the 
very blows from which the apparently jmlicious will anticipate its 
annihilation. He must stand on an eminence from which he can 
see what other men cannot see. He must be eyes to the blind, 
whose want of eye-sight will lead them to make war upon their 
benefactor. He nmst rouse men from their dangerous sleep, who, 
while they begin to see men as trees walking, will murmur because 
they are waked, and instead of thanking their deliverer, find fault 
with the rudeness that disturbed them, and assume to give directions 
when they should be beginning to learn. William Goodell. 



Time, which waits for no man, but keeps on, 
with even foot-fall, whether witness of right or 
wrong, frankness and openness, or chicanery and 
intrigue, brought round the year 1839, 

Mr. Torrey, who had represented his county 
as crying out for a new paper, till possibly the echo 
of his own voice might have led him to think his 
testimony true, now found a feeling waking up in 
Old Essex that he had not anticipated. The wom- 
en there, with whom, in the spirit of a true mus- 



73 



sulman, be had, a few months previous, consider- 
ed it defilement to sit in Convention, had always 
been most effectual helpers of the financial depart- 
ment of the cause. Some of them had been 
among the earliest laborers ; and, experienced in 
observing the pertinacity with which the enemy, 
from the beginning, had striven to possess himself 
of the fortress, by striking down the warder of the 
gate, were startled by Mr. Torrey^s great zeal for 
a new paper. They compared it with his hatred 
of the Liberator, so manifest during the clerical 
appeal controversy, and took note, from time to 
time, of the manner in which he argued this new 
necessity. 

They found that, like the Colonization Society, 
the necessity had two faces ; one for the real and 
the other for the pretended abolitionist. They 
saw that this '*' necessity " was founded on preju- 
dice against the Liberator, as the Colonization So- 
ciety rests upon prejudice against the free man of 
color. 

" oil, purer tlian suspicion's hmulred eyes, 
Is that fine sense, vvliicli, to the pure in lieart. 
By mere op|)uo;nanry of their own goudnecis, 
Reveals llie ajjproach of evil." 

They decided to strengthen the Liberator for 
the coming emergency, and raised ^'5C0 for its 
support. 7 



74 



This appropriation operated like an Ithuriel 
spear upon the craft of the confederated opposers. 
It had been their policy to represent their propos- 
ed periodica] as hkely to aid the circulation of the 
Liberator. Now, Mr. Torrey pronounced this 
appropriation a highly improper one. He put his 
condemnation of the measure into the shape of a 
general principle. "An Anti-Slavery Society, 
aiding the circulation of the Boston Recorder, the 
Liberator, or any other such irrelevant periodical ! 
it would meet strong opposition at Lynn." He 
mistook, from inability to appreciate, the abolition- 
ists of that neighborhood. That indefinable sen- 
sation began to stir through the anti-slavery ranks 
which betokens a conflict. The " oppugnancy" 
rose in every true heart near the scene of action ; 
but so craftily had the enemy wrought, that the 
danger was, lest he should accomplish his ends be- 
fore he could be unmasked to the general gaze. 
Men who saw not the causes, observed the whirl 
and eddy of the current of events. The feeling 
was like that described by Max. Piccclomini, be- 
fore the revolt of Friedland. 

*< Something, 



I can't but know, is going forward round me. 
I see it gathering — crowding — driving on, 
In wild uncustomary movements. Well — 
In due time, it will doubtless reach even mt. 



75 

There was a breathless and impatient looking 
for. 

Indications of the exact course that the miners 
and sappers were pursuing, now came to light. 
Mr. St. Clair, still an agent of the Massachu- 
setts Board, left in their office a rough draught 
of resolutions to effect a fatal change in the ba- 
sis of the Massachusetts Society, making it 
exclusive and sectarian, by a rejection of aU as 
consistent members, who did not sustain the 
government of the country at the polls. The 
establishment of a new paper was also enjoined, 
in terms the necessary effect of which was de- 
structive of the Liberator. These resolutions 
were endorsed by Mr. Torrey, thus : 

" Good. I think, now, such resolutions should 
have been presented at the Essex County Meet- ' 
mg at Amesbury Mills. Charles T. Torrey." 

The plan was, to carry the State by counties 
and by towns, and then to crowd up to the 
grand annual meeiing in irresistible strength, to 
give the finishing blow. 

The next meeting of consequence was that of 
the Worcester County Society, (north divis- 
ion,) at Fitchburg. There, Mr. St. Clair in- 
troduced the new ideas, by means of the pro- 



76 



jected resolutions. At the close of the meet 
ing, after most of the friends bad retired, and a- 
gainst the wishes of some who remained, he per- 
sisted in presenting them. They were adopted, 
after speeches from himself and the Rev. Mr.Col- 
ver, by the raising of five or six hands ; prob- 
ably without a perception of their design and 
tendency on the part of that few. 

FITCHBURG RESOLUTIONS. 

Whereas, slavery is the creature of legislation, 
upheld and supported by law, and is to be abol- 
ished by law, and by law only ; and 

Whereas, in order to secure its legal overthrow, 
the legislative bodies having power over ihe same 
must be composed of good men and true, who 
will go for its immediate abolition ; and 

Whereas, it is impossible to obtain such a legis- 
lative body, unless abolitionists carry their princi- 
ples to the ballot-box, and vote only for men of 
this character ; and 

Whereas, it is impossible to urge this duty on 
the consideration of abolitionists without an able 
paper, which will take this ground and maintain it 
consistently, firmly and constantly : Therefore, 

Resolved, 1st, That, in the opinion of this 
Society, every abolitionist is in duty bound, not 
to content himself with merely refusing to vote 
for any man who is opposed to the emancipation 
of the slave, but to go to the polls, and 



77 



THROW HIS VOTE FOR SOME MAN KNOWN TO FAVOR 
IT. 

2d. That it is his imperious duty to make inaU- 
enable human rights the first and paramount princi- 
ples in pohtical action ; and, when any two can- 
didates for Congress or the State Legislature are 
put in nomination, one for and the other against 
the immediate abohtion of slavery, he is in duty 
Ijound to vote for the abolitionist, independent of 
all other political considerations ; — or, if neither 
candidate be of this description, then he is equal- 
ly bound to go to the polls, and vote for some 
true man in oppostion to them both, and to do all 
he can, lawfully, to defeat their election. 

3d. That a weekly and ably-conducted anti- 
slavery paper, which shall take right, high, and 
consistent ground on this subject, and constantly 
urge abolitionists, as in duty bound, to use their 
political, as well as their moral and religious pow- 
er and rights for the immediate overthrow of 
slavery, is now greatly needed in Massachusetts, 
as has been but too plainly proved at the expense 
of the cause, by difficulties which have been expe- 
rienced in the Fourth Congressional District, in 
reaching the anti-slavery electors on the subject 
of their political duties. 

4th. That we therefore earnestly recommend 
to the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts 
Anti-Slavery Society, or to the Society itself at its 
next annual meeting, to establish a paper of this 
description — of about the size and price of the 
7* 



78 



Herald of Freedom — to be issued every week lo 
subscribers — to be exclusively confined to slavery 
and abolition — to urge constantly, political as well 
as moral and religious action — to be edited by 
some able, efficient man, who can conscientiously 
and heartily advocate all these points — and to be 
under the entire contiol of the Executive Com- 
mittee of the State vSociety. 

5th. That we desire every County and Town 
Society, which may hold a meeting previous to 
the annual meeting of the State Society, to take 
up and pass an opinion on this subject. 

These resolutions were lithographed and sent 
lo the officers of Societies, by Mr. Phelps, Mr. 
St. Clair, and Mr. Torrey, accompanied by earnest 
injunctions to county meetings to send up great del- 
egations to the annual meeting, instructed to carry 
them through, with assurances to such as they 
could not fully trust, that " they were opposed 
to nothing but dough-face-ism." 

In the same number of the Liberator in which 
the resolutions appeared, an unanticipated ob- 
stacle to their design was also announced. 
The President of the Massachusetts Society, 
though neither peace man nor perfectionist, but 
onew^ho, individually, considered ithis duty to use 
his elective franchise, took charge of the fmancial 
concerns of the Liberator, in conjunction with 



79 



two of his colleagues of the Board ; and in their 
individual capacity they gave notice tojhe pubhc 
of their reasons for so doing. That paper was, in 
their view identified with the anti-slavery cause 
in a manner that could be affirmed of no other 
print, not only from the circumstance of its 
having been the first, but more strongly, because 
of the faithfulness, constancy, and disregard of 
peril and persecution ; the excellence of character 
editorial talent, and intuitive sagacity, of its con- 
ductor. And because they thought those quali- 
ties never more needed than at that moment, 
they called upon all who loved the cause to 
stand by the Liberator. It was signed by Francis 
Jackson, William Basset, and Edmund Quincy. 

Here w as an unexpected blow : — A contra- 
diction of calumnies, a financial security, a poli- 
tician's attestation to the value of the Liberator, 
combined in one view, before the eyes of the an- 
ti-slavery community. It was done, too, without 
any claim on the part of the doers, that the Liber- 
ator should sink from being the organ of all in the 
cause who chose to use it, into the mere instru- 
ment of a few. This was prophetic of stout resis- 
tance to the narrow, exclusive, and enslaving spirit 
which had so long wrought in secret, to undermine 
the broad foundations of the anti-slavery cause. 



80 



The shrewd proverb of the lookers-on during 
revolutions, says that 

'' Treason never prospers : what's the reason 1 
When it prospers, men don't call it treason." 

Happily for the slave, at this critical instant, there 
were not wanting men to call out " Treason 1" 
against this whole procedure, irrespective of its 
probable success, in that soul-cleaving and victo- 
rious voice which carries with it instant convic- 
tion. 

It is interesting to observe the course of men 
in peculiar and trying times, and to notice the 
strong contrasts of character and conduct that 
such times present. 

Mr. Phelps, Mr. Stanton, Mr. Torrey, and Mr. 
St. Clair were hurrying fiom meeting to meeting 
with the Fitchburg resolutions, or driving the 
quill over quires of paper, nrging the instant con- 
vocation of the societies for the introduction of 
the new paper, saying that it was not intended to 
be in opposition to the old, but only introduced 
because nine out often of the abolitionists in the 
State would not take the Liberator, — that it 
would probably be adopted with great unanimity 



81 



as the organ of the State Society, at the Annual 
Meeting — and dwelling strongly on the impor- 
tance of sending up large delegations, instructed 
to vote in its favor. 

Mr. Garrison stood calmly watching the aspect 
of the times, and when the signs were full, he 
raised the note of warning — 

"watchman, what of the night?" 

The annual meeting of the State Anti-Slavery 
Society will he held in this city on the 2od inst. 
There are many indications which lead us to re- 
gard it as pregnant with momentous consequences 
to the aholition cause in this section of the coun- 
try. Perhaps at no period has there been so 
much cause for just alarm as at the present. 
Strong foes are without, insidious plotters are 
within the camp. A conflict is at hand, — if the 
signs of the times do not deceive us, — which is 
to be more hotly contested, and which will re- 
quire more firmness of nerve and greater single- 
ness of purpose, (combined with sleepless vigi- 
lance and unswerving integrity,) than any through 
which we have passed to victory. Once more, 
therefore, we would speak trumpet-tongued — 
sound an alarm-bell — light up a heacon-fire — 
give out a new watch-word — so that there may 
be a general rallying of our early, intrepid, storm- 
proof, scarred and veteran coadjutors, at the com- 
ing anniversary, — all panoplied as of yore, and 



82 



prepared to give battle to internal contrivers of 
mischief, as readily as to external and avowed 
enemies. 

The danger which now threatens all that is 
pure and vital in our cause, is two-fold and com- 
plex. From the commencement of our sacred 
struggle, we have been resisted by every religious 
sect, and made by turns the loot-ball of every 
political party. As among all sects and all par- 
ties, there are some who will never bow the knee 
to Baal, but are resolved to follow Richt and 
Truth through flood and fiie, come what may — 
these, by the irresistible affinity of principle, have 
come into our ranks, repudiating every sectarian 
distinction, every party badge, and refusing to 
march under any other banner than that of Hu- 
manity. Bravely have they contended, cheer- 
fully have they suffered, in the cause of their 
enslaved countrymen ; and nobly have they with- 
stood a thousand wily artifices to seduce them 
from their post. And they will persevere unto 
the end. 

''Tempt them with bribe?, 'twill be in vain ; 
Try them with fire, you'll find them true." 

But all external opposition, in whatever form 
it may appear, is harmless, compared to internal 
sedition. — And with pain w^e avow it, there is a 
deep scheme laid by individuals, at present some- 
what conspicuous, as zealous and active abolition- 
ists, to put the control of the anti-slavery move- 



83 



ments in this Commonwealth into other hands. 
This scheme, of course, is of clerical origin, and 
the prominent ringleaders fill the clerical office. 
One of the most restless was a participant in tlie 
fatnous "Clerical Appeal" conspiracy, — though 
not one of the immortal five. The design is, by 
previous management and drilling, to effect such 
a change in the piesent faithful and liberal-minded 
Board of Managers of the Slate Society, at the 
annual meeting, as will throw the balance of pow- 
er into the hands of a far different body of men, 
for the accomplishment of ulterior measures 
which are now in embryo. — The next object is, 
to effect the establishment of a new weekly anti- 
slavery journal, to be the organ of the State Soci- 
ety, for the purpose, if not avowedly, yet design- 
edly to subvert the Liberator, and thus relieve 
the abolition cause in this State of the odium of 

counteracting such a paper. Then make 

way for the clergy ! For, by " hanging Garrison," 
and repudiating the Liberator, they will surely 
condescend to take the reins of anti-slavery man- 
agement into their own hands ! 

The plot, thus far, has been warily managed, 
— so as, if possible, to " deceive the very elect." 
Many, we know, are' already ensnared, and some, 
at least, who neither intend nor suspect mischief. 
The guise in which it is presented, is one of 
deep solicitude for the success of our cause. No 
attempt is made to lower down the standard — O 
no! — but simply to change the men to whom 



84 



has been so long entrusted the management of 
the enterpiize, and put in their place younger 
men, better men, who will accomplish wonders, 
and perform their duties more faithfully — that's 
all ! While, privately, by conversation, letters, 
circulars, See. &ic. every effort is making to dis- 
parage the Liberator, (the paper is too tame for 
these rampant plotters!) and to calumniate its 
editor, no hostility to either is to be openly avow- 
ed ! Far from it ; for honesty in this case n)ight 
not, perad venture, prove to be the best policy. 
— The shape in which this new project is to be 
urged, is developed in the resolutions which were 
adopted at the recent meeting of the Worcester 
County North Division A. S. Society, at Fitch- 
buri^h. Those resolutions were concocted in 
Essex County, by the joint labors of two clergy- 
men, and passed as above stated, — only four or 
five hands, we learn, being raised in their favor. 
The plan is, it seems, to get as many anti-slavery 
societies committed in favor of these resolutions, 
before the annual meeting, as possible. The 
political necessity which is urged for another 
paper is ridiculous ; and we know it is nothing 
but a hollow pretence. 

The trusty friends of our good cause, and all 
who desire to baffle the machiiiations of a clerical 
combination, will need no other notice than this, 
to induce them to rally at ihe annual meeting, 
and watch with jealousy and meet with firmness 
every attempt, however plausibly made, to effect 



85 



any material change in the management of the 
concerns of the State Society. Tie spirit that 
would discard such men as Francis Jackson, 
Eilis Gray Loring, Samuel E. Sewall, Edmund 
Quincy, and Wendell Phillips, is treacherous to 
humanity. 

As a specimen of the billing and cooing which 
is going on between gentlemen of the sacerdotal 
robe, in order to bring about a radical alteration 
in anti-slavery control, read the following extract 
from a recent letter of the Rev. Dr. Osgood, of 
Springfield, to Prof. Emerson, of the Theological 
Seminary at Andover : 

" I do not say these things to palliate the con- 
duct of these writers in the anti-slavery papers 
who have poured such torrents of abuse upon the 
non-conformists among the clergy. 1 have ever 
spoken freely about many of these communica- 
tions, both to friends and opposers. I think there 
has been a bad spirit manifested on the side of the 
abolitionists toward the opposing clergy ; or, if you 
please, those who stand aloof and do nothing. I 
do most sincerely hope that my brethren who like 
you (!) hate slavery, but still remain neuter, (!) 
will calmly review the whole ground, and sacri- 
fice all minor considerations, and work with us in 
this cause. I see no insuperable objectioiis. I 
desire this the more ardently, because the char- 
acter of the ministry suffers, in the estimation of 
many good men, by the course they pursue, while 
the enemies of all righteousness take occasion to 
8 



86 



thrust a sword into the vitals of religion Itself, 
through the clergy. Mr. Garrison, sir, is not the 
principal offender in this matter; [very gentle !] 
— he is made answerable, as a public editor, for 
the conduct of others. But CCf ^'^^' brethren 
[such men as IVloses Stuart and Ralph Emerson I] 
can easily take the sword out of the hand of these 
VIOLENT AND PREJUDICED MEN.^^XB 
(XJ"And I trust they will soon do it effectually, 
by some course of action. The cause ivould be 
greatly promoted by their co-operation' 11 ,SJi 

Wendell Phillips, the same who took the brunt 
of the battle at Faneuil Hall, upon the day when 
men met there to wash their hands of Lovejoy's 
murder, was among the foremost to detect the 
subtler form of danger. His letter to the finan- 
cial committee of the Liberator, which appeared 
in the next column to the call of the watchman, 
stripped the opposition of their disguises, with a 
firm and dexterous hand. It exhibits, in a con- 
densed form, the mind of one who had knowl- 
edge of the cause throughout the State, as a lec- 
turer and a manager of the Society, and through- 
out the land, as an acute and philosophical ob- 
server. In politics, a voter, — in theology, a 
Calvinist, — in church government, a congrega- 
tionalistj — looking on these things from the 



87 



same point of view with those who were laboring 
for the destruction of Freedom, toleration and 
frateriial confidence in the cause, he came to dia- 
metrically opposite conclusions. — 

*' Tlie hearVs aye the part aye, 
That makes us right or wrong." 

LETTER OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Messrs. Jackson, Quincy, and Bassett : 

Dear Sirs — I wish to express to you the 
satisfaction which the new arrangements for the 
Liberator have given me. They will gain for it 
a wider circulation and more permanent useful- 
ness. I feel not merely for the paper itself — 
though it would give me pain, I confess, to see 
the first banner which was unfurled in our cause, 
which has braved for so many years the battle and 
the breeze, having lived down its enemies, sink at 
last from the coldness of its friends. But, apart 
from this. I regard the success of the Liberator 
as identical with that of the abolition cause itself. 
Though so bitterly opposed, it does more to dis- 
seminate, develope and confirm our principles, 
than any other publication whatever. The spirit 
which produced, still animates it, and with mag- 
netic influence draws from all parts of society 
every thing like around it. Other measures may 
suit different circumstances, and other parts of 
the country ; but here, and now, the spirit of the 
Liberator is the touchstone of true hearts. Almost 



88 



all the opposition it has met with, various as it 
seems, springs from one cause. At starting, some 
who agreed with its principles denounced it 
as '^ foul-mouthed and abusive ;" next, the occa- 
sional exf)ression of some individual opinions of 
its editor, gained it the name of " irreligious and 
Jacobin ;" — and now some point to its peace 
views as infidel in their tendency, and a stum- 
bling-block in our way. Under all these disguises 
have men concealed their motives, sometimes 
even from themselves. 

The real cause of this opposition, in my opinion, 
is the fundamental principle upon which the I^ibe- 
rator has been conducted : — that rights are more 
valuable than forms ; that truth is a belter guide 
than prescription ; that no mntter how much truth 
a sect embodies, no matter how useful a profes- 
sion may be, no matter how much benefit any 
form of government may confer — still they are all 
but dust in the balance when weighed against the 
protection of human rights, the discussion and 
publication of great truths ; that all forms of 
human device are worse than useless, when they 
stand in Truth's way. Tliese are its piinciples; 
— frank, fearless single-heartedness, the utmost 
freedom of thought and speech, its characteristics. 
If we fail to impress these on each abolition 
heart, our efforts are paralyzed, and our cause is 
lost. Pride of settled opinion, love of lifeless 
forms, undue attachments to sect, are its foes. 

With the fullest charity for all conscientious 



89 



scruples, and dissenting, as I do, from the peace- 
views of the Liberator, I cannot see how their 
discussion, conducted in a Christian spirit, and 
with sincere love of truth, can offend the con- 
science of any man. Limited to a brief space, 
as it is, it can have no effect on the general char- 
acter of the paper. I mean to give all my 
influence, (and, in this crisis, when the paper so 
much needs its friends, I wish that influence were 
greater,) to gain it the confidence, and pour its 
spirit into the mind of every one I can reach. 1 
shall esteem it a privilege to second your efforts. 
The danger I most dread is, to have our cause fall 
under the control of any party, sect, or profession. 
That way ruin lies. The chiefest bulwark against 
it, I know of, is the Liberator. Success to it. 
May it have the cordi# support of every abolition 
heart. Yours, truly, 

Wendell Phillips. 
Boston, Jan. 7th, 1839. 

Troubles, however different in their nature, al- 
ways seem to have fellowship with each other. 
At this juncture, while the Anti-Slavery communi- 
ty in Massachusetts were laboring under the 
pain and astonishment of the recent development, 
came a Sub-Committee, consisting of Mr. Leavitt 
and Mr. Stanton, from New York, to say that, as 
the slated payments due to the National Treasury 
8* 



90 



were unpaid, the contract became null and 
void.* 

The Massachusetts Board could not, as law- 
yers, or as men of business, admit tliis to be 
the case; but, anxious to discharge the obliga- 
tion, they came to the*folIowing resolution, in the 
presence of the New York Committee. 

^'' Resolved, That the Executive Committee be 
invited to send their agents into the State, and 
take any other measures they may deem best, 
to collect the amount due on the pledge made by 
this society, and to become due on the first of 
February, and to remit the whole to the treasury 
of the Massachusetts Society, under the promise 
that the same shall be immediate/y and ivholly 
remitted to New York ; and that in the collec- 
tion of the same, they be authorised to receive 
the amount of pledges hitherto made to the Mas- 
sachusetts Society. '^ 

They hoped, by this, to open a way for the in- 
stant redemption of the pledge, thj-ough the 
means of the friendly co-operation of the New 
York Committee, and trusted that the rash, un- 

*For the terms of this contract and the occasion of itg necessity, 
see pages 10 and 47. 



91 

biismess-lfke and unbrotherly nullification of so 
necessary an arrangement, would be avoided. 

To the surprise of the Massachusetts men, who 
then could perceive no sufficient motive for such 
a course, the New York Committee declined to 
accept these terms. Were they suffering for the 
money ? Why then did they not take the readi- 
est and the best way to get it ?— through the 
Massachusetts Society,— not over it ? Did they 
love peace and unity? Why then for one mo- 
ment hesitate ? They were invited to send in 
their agents, and take any other means they 
might deem best, under the arrangement of the 
preceding June. VVhat more ought brethren 
and honest men to desire ? What more could be 
accompUshed by their plan, of going on as if the 
Massachusetts Society were not in existence? 
One thing more it could not/ai7to accomplish, — 
the destruction of the Massachusetts Society. 
Was it possible that the New York brethren had 
aimed at that ? Were it so, they could not better 
have hit the mark than by coming at that painful 
moment, to envenom a financial embarrassment 
which, singly, could have been so easily met, by 
mingling it with the poisoned sources of difficulty 
that had just been laid bare. They came for 



92 



money, at a moment when the state treasury 
was found empty — the state agents proved 
treacherous, the state energies bent upon work- 
ing out a political demonstration in the eyes of 
the whole country. And because, under all these 
difficulties, a part of the money had not been paid 
when it became due, they refused to collect it, 
with permission, for the mere pleasure, it seemed, 
of collecting it without permission. If they were 
unwiUing to acknowledge, even in form, the exist- 
ence of the Massachusetts Society, what was the 
legitimate inference ? Did the Committee really 
agree with the slaveholder, and his soul-guard 
from the truth, — the associations of the ministry, 
that the Massachusetis Society ought to be de- 
stroyed ? 

Massachusetts men deemed it a virtue to repel 
these thoughts, which the conduct of the New 
York Committee could not fail to suggest. They 
shrunk fmm the pain of beholding and weighing 
the evidence of a want of fraternal confidence, and 
devotion to the cause. They were doomed for 
this weakness, to feel soon, in their own persons, 
how much better it is to judge our fellows by their 
deeds, than by our oivji hopes or fears. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE DENOEUMENT. 



What we would think, is not the qnestlon liere. 

The urtair speaks lor itself, and clearest proofs. — Schiller. 



The annual meeting of the INfassachusetls Soci- 
ety was tlie time proposed by the confederated 
agents and secretaries of the National and Massa- 
chusetts Societies, for the fidl development of 
their plans. Like children playing at draughts, 
they had calculated their own game, but not the 
counteracting moves of their antagonists. Mr. 
Garrison's unexpected trumpet-blast, threw them 
into confusion. They were ignorant of the ex- 
tent of his knowledge, and, in their consternation, 
did the exact thing, that innocence would by its 
nature have necessarily avoided — denied the ex- 
istence of any p!ot. 

Mr. Garrison had spoken of two clergymen in 
Essex County. Mr. Torrey and Mr. St. Clair, 
like Scrub in the comedy, were ^' sure he was talk- 



94 



ing of them," and went into a labored denial and 
explanation ; all of which, when examined and 
condensed, demonstrated that a great amount of 
time and labor, and by means of the agents and 
the funds of the Massachusetts and National Soci- 
eties, had been privately expended in sowing the 
seed of the new paper. 

Mr. Phelps, to whom Mr. Garrison had not al- 
luded, identified himself with the plot, in a series 
of letters, whose remarkable bitterness was char- 
itably imputed by some to the peevishness of re- 
cent illness. Others there were, who received 
these letters as a proclamation to ill concerned, 
that the writer was no longer " Mr. Garrison's 
Brother Phelps;" and as an evidence that the 
threat of the Recorder had effected its purpose. 

The Anti-Slavery Office became a scene of 
deep interest, both to the devoted fiiend of the 
cause, and to the close observer of human nature, 
while the tide of inquiring comers was on the 
flood. The innocent regularly brought confirma- 
tion that the alarm-note of Mr. Garrison was 
most fortunately timed. They all recollected 
some incomprehensible circumstance on which 
the recent developments had shed a flood of light. 
Some recalled a conversation with " your agent," 



95 



some, a remark of ^' our secretary," hinting at a 
change in the Board, or a way by which clerical op- 
ponents might be gained over to the cause ; " for 
we must have all these men." Abundance of sayings 
came to mind, by which, when first uttered, they 
had been exceedingly puzzled, and had finally laid 
aside as jests or incomprehensible : — having the 
master-key, they could now unlock them all. 
Notes and letters by the dozen were forth-coming, 
from Mr. Torrey and others, marked '• confiden- 
tial." His correspondents now began to feel that 
silence was crime." An eagerness to give and 
receive information, marked the innocent. Not 
so the guilty. They vehemently denied the ex- 
istence of any plot, — said that Mr. Garrison was 
unfit to be entrusted with any important post in 
the cause, that Non-Resistants were not properly 
abolitionists, — that slavery was the creature of 
law — that votes made it, and votes only could un- 
make it — that though the Liberator did in its col- 
umns advocate political action, it was inconsistent 
in so doing, and that they thought a new paper 
absolutely necessary. 

In this position, the day of the annual meeting 
found the conflicting principles and men. Bigot- 
ry and sectarism were pitted against religious 



96 



liberty and Christian Jove, — openness and candor 
against craft and concealment, — treachery against 
fidelity, — falsehood against truth, and, (for things 
that are equal to the same things are equal to one 
another,) freedom against bondage. 

It was the largest anii -slavery gathering everj 
witnessed in Massachusetts, and a noble sight it) 
was to look upon. It preserved its original hetero- 
geneous character, being composed of old and 
young, men and women ; of every sect, party, con- 
dition and color, all filled with the most absorb- 
ing interest. Well might every eye be rivetted, 
and every heart wrapped in earnest attention. It 
was a turning point in the cause. A strong and 
mighty wind had come to winnow the wheat from 
the chaff; the crooked was to be made straight — 
the hidden was to be revealed : — expectation 
was wrought up to the top of its bent. The 
report of the Board of Managers, written by Mr. 
Garrison, was first read. Men looked wonder- 
ingly at one another. " Is this the report that 
we received such earnest entreaties to come 
and vote down ? we find no fault in it. Are 
these the opinions of our board of officers, which 
it is represented to us as so desirable, for opinion's 
sake, to change? perhaps we might look farther, 
and find worse." 



97 



\ The report was laid aside to afford opportunity 
for the utterance of the thoughts which were swell- 
ing up, to find vent in every mind. The business 
committee, desirous of affording every facility 
to debate, opened tiie way by the introductions of 
the following- resolutions. 

Resolved, That the state of the Anti-Slavery 
cause in this Commonwe.dth demands the estab- 
lishment of an ably-conducted, cheap, official or- 
gan, to be under the control of the Board of 
Managers of the State Society, issued weekly to 
subscribers ; to advocate political as well as moral 
and religious action ; to be exclusively confined 
to the object of the Anti Slavery cause, and edit- 
ed by a man or men, who can conscientiously, 
heartily and consistently advocate all tlie anti- 
slavery measures, political as well as moral action ; 
and that the salary of the editor or editors, to- 
gether with all other necessary ex[)enses thereof, 
be paid out of the funds of the Society. 

Resolved, That the Board of Managers are here- 
by instructed to make arrangements, if practicable, 
with the proprietors and editor of the Liberator, 
to make that paper the organ aforesaid, and under 
the above restriction ; or, if that cannot be done, 
that they take measures, as soon as practicable, 
to establish an organ, as recommended in the res- 
olutions passed by the Worcester County North 
Divison Anti-Slavery Society, at its late annual 
meeting in Fitchburg. 9 



98 



Mr. St. Clair first spoke. He occupied more 
then an hour in explaining to the meeting that 
Mr. Torrey had no hand in the Fitchburg resolu- 
tions. Mr. Torrey occupied the remainder of the 
afternoon in deny ins; the existence of any plot, dep- 
recating the fulsome eulogy of abolitionists, when 
they spoke of the Liberator; — said that its cir- 
culation was so small that there was absolute need 
of another paper, for the purpose of advertisiiig the 
meetings, and tliat abolitionists were deteruHned 
to have a more effectual medium of comunica- 
tion with the electors of Massachusetts. He said, 
•• Mr. St. Clair, and myself, Mr. Phelps and Mr. 
Stanton, we four, are the originators of this new 
paper." 

Mr. Stanton replied '• I warn the gentleman 
to be careful of his pronouns. I defy any one to 
show a letter or a fragment of a letter, to prove 
that I have been implicated in the plan ; for I have 
mentioned it in but one, and that to a friend in 
another State.'' Mr. Torrey said that it was con- 
templated to obtain the services of some first- 
rate editor— Elizur Wright, or John G. Whittier. 
" Ah ! comes the arrow out of that quiver!'' inly 
responded a few earnest listeners. But the gen- 
eral feeling was, that it was only a swelling word 
used by Mr. Torrey, for effect, so absurd, so im- 



99 



possible did it seem that either of those raen could 
be made to stand in Massacliusetts upon the cler- 
ical platform of hatred to Mr. Garrison. As 
soon would Wendell Phillips have been su=pect- 
ed of laboring to accommodate pro-slavery pre- 
judice with a less odious editor in Pennsylvania ; 
or Ellis Gray Loring, of supplying the deficien- 
cies of the Emancipator, by a hostile paper in 
New York. Mr. Torrey urged the forlorn con- 
dition of Massachusetts among her sister states, 
without an organ ; and seemed as much impress- 
ed with the mortification of being a member of 
a Society so sadly unfurnished, as were the slav- 
ish Jews, when taunted by the surrounding na- 
tions with bavins no king. 

Mr. May did not suflfer in the view of what so 
much affected Mr. Torrey. " We have never 
wanted means of communication with the public," 
he said; "when the Massachusetts Society 
wants an organ^ she sounds a trumpet." Night 
was closing round the combatants, and Mr. May 
moved an indefinite postponement of the whole 
subject. Mr. Phelps exclaimed against thus '' giv- 
ing the go-by to the most important subject that 
could come before them." Mr. May withdrew 
his motion, and the meeting closed, to meet again 
in an hour. 



100 



Again the throng came together, with ardded 
numbers and spirit. Mr. Stanton took the floor, 
and to the utter astonishment of the meeting, pro- 
claimed that the Liberator had lowered the stand- 
ard of abolition, that Mr. Garrison was recreant to 
the cause, and that therefore a new paper was in- 
dispensable. 

His words opened the flood-gates of many mem- 
ories. Instantly rushed through the minds of ab- 
olitionists all that had passed since he first stood 
among them, the trusted and beloved ; their guide 
— their companion — their own familiar friend. 
Grief and indignation strove for the mastery in 
their hearts as he went on. *' A new pnper was 
therefore indispensable. True, it was said that 
the columns of the Liberator were filled with po- 
litical matter — but how is that political matter ob- 
tained ? It is wrought into my frame in head- 
aches and side-aches, how that political matter is 
obtained. If lamps could speak, they could tell 
that it is by taking your agents from the field to 
furnish it, after the dity's exhausting labor. — 
There ought to be an editor to do it. Again ; 
what accompanied this political matter, on the oth- 
er side of the paper ? Discussions calculated to 
nullify its efiect. Expressions of opposite opin- 



101 



ions. It is not that other subjects are introduced 
into the Liberator — it is that such other subjects 
are introduced — subjects so injurious to the cause. 
Mr. President, I would not injure the Liberator or 
Mr. Garrison. On the subject of peace, perhaps, 
he is nearer right than I am. But he has lower- 
ed the standard of aboHtion." 

Mr. Garrison and Mr. Stanton had met contin- 
ually during the season previous to this attack. 
They had met as aforetime, brotherly, and Mr. 
Stanton had never, even by a word, prepared his 
friend for such a proceeding. Conviction was 
flashed upon the minds of the audience by every 
sentence he uttered, that the spurious abolition, 
which, from its being defended by the ministry, 
had obtained the name of clerical abolition, had, 
at last made a conquest of a suitable layman to 
carry forward its operations. The minds of men 
rapidly reverted to the clerical effort of 1837 to 
break up the Massachusetts Society. Again they 
saw the eftbrt renewed, to cast out its most efficient 
members. Again the same old war-cry sounded 
in their ears — " Let them go out from among us, 
for they are not of us ; and the Massachusetts So- 
ciety must have a new organ !" How many a 

grieved heart, that had trustingly relied on Slan- 
gs 



102 



ton to combat this fresh attack on the cause, on 
thus hearing his proclamation of his own treach- 
ery to his comrades, was ready to exclaim, 

" Oh had an angel spoke those words to me, 

I would not have believed no tongue but Hubert's." 

All, then, was true ; the boast of Mr. St. Clair, 
that if he were treacherous, then was Stanton and 
every agent of the Massachusetts Society treach- 
erous too ; the declaration of Mr. Torrey — " ive 
four ! ^^ No need 7iow, of a conservator of pro- 
nouns : the mask was thrown off. 

Mr. Garrison indignantly repelled the charge 
brought against him. "Am 1 recreant to the cause ? 
who believes it?" "No! No!" burst forth 
from the crowded aisles and galleries. " Let me 
ask him a question; " said Mr. Stanton. '•' Mr. 
Garrison ! do you or do you not believe it a sin 
to go to the polls .'^" 

The indignant audience did not cry ''shame !" 
— they were too deeply moved for utterance. 
They were silent in breathless astonishment. 
Was ihh 3Iassachusetis 9 Was it at a meeting of 
her free-souled sons and daughters, from a plat- 
form of toleration so broad that every human be- 
ing, laboring for immediate emancipation, might 



" 103 

stand upon it, that a man presented a creed-mea- 
sure to his brethren, with the threat to brand 
every brow as unworthy, that overtopped that 
little span ? Was it in prophetic fear of this dis- 
graceful scene that Massachusetts abolitionists 
had so early renounced the doctrine of racks and 
thumb-screws — the idea of reproach for opinion ? 
The same indignant thoughts thronged up for ut- 
terance in every heart. Quakers, Calvinists, 
Unitarians; — Whigs, Democrats, and Non-Re- 
sistants ; — men of every religious opinion and 
every political theory — this question insulted 
them all. Might the believer in the religious du- 
ty of voting claim authority to summon to the 
confessional, all whom he chose to mark for ex- 
clusion from the cause, and enter into discussion 
and condemnation of their belief? Then might 
every other sectary do the same. The Bap- 
tist might banish the Friend — the Methodist 
might proscribe the Independent — the white 
man reject the man of color — the women vote 
that men were disqualified — or men assert the 
same absurdity with respect to women. If the 
precious time of a thousand friends of the slave, 
met to devise measures for making every voter an 
abolitionist, was to be consumed in making eve- 



104 



ry abolitionist a voter, men felt that a change in 
their point of agreement — a change in the consti- 
tution and the principles that made the constitu- 
tion, must be effected. The common pass-word 
must no longer be "immediate emancipation" 
alone, but every sectarian or partizan must shout 
his own, and draw his weapon upon every aboli- 
tionist who heeded it not. Hatred, wrong, and 
bondage, unmasked their hideous faces to love, 
right, and freedom, in the question that so roused 
every soul in that assembly. 

Mr. Garrison promptly answered it, so as not 
to deny his principles, nor yet to take up the 
guage of the non-resistance conflict, which Mr. 
Stanton had thrown down : — " Sin for me I " " I 
ask you again," persisted the infatuated ques- 
tioner, ''do you or do you not believe it a sin 
to go to the polls ? " " Sin for me " — was the 
same imperturbable reply. 

This treacherous interrogatory,* fit act of a fa- 

* The following resolution, submitted to the business Committee in 
the haiid-wriling of Rlr. Stanton, will explain the use which was 
to have been made of Mr. Garrison's answer, had the plot succeed- 
ed. '' We shall thus," said one, "get rid of the Non-Resistants and 
the women." 

*' Resolved, That every minister of the gospel is hound to 
preach against slavery; that every member of a Christian Church 
is bound to have no fellowship w'ith this unfruitful work of dark- 
ness; that every eoclesiaslical body is bound to purify itself of 



105 



miliar of the holy office to a heretic, but ineffably 
disgraceful from the Secretary of the National 
Anti-Slavery Society to the man on whose mo- 
tion the National Anti-Slavery Society came into 
existence, stirred the souls of the abolitionists as 
if they had seen the slave-driver stand suddenly 
forth with his scourge and manacles, in visible 
enibodymentof the spiritual tyranny they now felt. 
A scene of tempestuous conflict followed, as the 
whole scope and bearing of the work that had 
been going on in the Commonwealth under the 
auspices of the ''four," became apparent. They 
stood like him who has tampered with the em- 
bankments that toil and sacrifice have built be- 
tween the devouring ocean and a level and fer- 
tile land. The indignant feeling of the audience 
rose to an almost uncontrollable pitch ; yet they 
did restrain it ; for the winnovving-tiine had come, 



these al)oinl nations; and that every person entitled to tlie elective 
fraiicliise. is ixxiiid not only to refrain from voting for persons 
as iiutiona! and ?tate officers, who are unwillinor to u?e all their 
aiitliurity for tlie immediate abolition of slavery, but is bound at 

F.VKRY F.LKCTION, TO KEPAIR TO THE Pol.f.S, and Caft his VOtC 

for !5urli men as will g-o to the ver;2;e of their official authority, for 
its instant annihilation; and that every member of en Anli' 
Slavery Society, xoho refuses, UNDEll ANY PKErEXT, thus 
to act morally or politicully, or counsels others to such a 
course, is guilty of gross inconsisfency, and widely departs 
from the original and fundamental principles of the Anti^ 
Slavery enterprize." 



106 



and they must take careful note of men's con- 
duct 710W, that they might know who to trust 
hereafter. Painful and unexpected it was to see 
Scott, Codding and Geo. Allen swept away, as the 
whirlwind of debate went on. The resolutions 
before the meeting were respecting a new paper. 
But the arguments by which they were sustained, 
denianded not only a new paper, but new princi- 
ples — a new constitution — a new society — new 
officers. Was the true and original test of mem- 
bership — not an acknowledgment of the justice 
and necessity of immediate emancipation, but a 
belief in the religious duty of voting at the polls ? 
Then would those arguments require the dissolu- 
tion of the Massachusetts Society, another set of 
men as managers of a new one, and the utter de- 
struction of the Liberator. Yet those who brought 
forward those arguments, and who, if sincere, 
w^ere bound by them to destroy the worthless in- 
strumentalities of which they complained, uni- 
formly declared, with the same breath, that noth- 
ing was further from their intention than to injure 
the Liberator, or to cast any imputations against 
the Board of Managers. 

Ellis Gray Loring rose in reply. " On the 
question of the need of a new paper, I do not 



107 



wish to speak. A need may exist which I do 
not perceive. Brethren tell me that there is 
such a need. I only say that to make such a 
paper the orgtin of the Society, and to sustain it at 
the expense of the Society, over the head of the 
Liberator would have a tendency to injure the 
latter. I do not say that gentlemen mGan it. 
They tell us they abjure such a thought. But it 
is a maxim in law, that the purpose of a man's 
acts must be presumed to correspond with their 
manifest tendency." 

Wendell Phillips argued earnesdy against the 
first resolution. The second was so manifestly 
a mockery that it was scarcely noticed. The spir- 
it of the meeting rose against the whole intolerant 
contrivance submitted to its decision. The "four," 
when they perceived it, strove, by every parlia- 
mentary device, lo delay judgment. They strove 
to divide the resolutions — to refer the matter to a 
committee — to adjourn the meeting. In vain. 
The spirit that filled the IMarlboro' Chapel 
that night, refused to be conjured into a com- 
mittee-room, or to leave its work unfinished. 
" Vote it down," '•' vote it down," was the reply 
to every proposition ; till Mr. Loring moved an 
indefinite postponement, which was almost unan- 
imously carried. 



103 



While the fate of the new paper was pending, a 
doubt was raised by Mr. Phelps and iNJr. St. Clair, 
as to the rii^ht of women to a voice in the decision. 
The question was hardly a debateable one in a 
society whose constitution welcomed all persons 
to an equal seat, and whose resolutions had pro- 
claimed that, in the cause of philanthropy, all p^r- 
sons, whether men or women, have the same du- 
ties and the same rights. The decision was there- 
fore referred to the President. 

It was not for Francis Jackson, whose house had, 
in 1835, been placed at the disposal of the women, 
under threats of its destruction, after the mercan- 
tile world had decided that they were out of their 
sphere in the anti-slavery cause — it was not for 
him to shrink from a just decision because the 
religious tvorld had taken up the cry. Now, as 
then, the women had judged for themselves. 
Here, also, was a responsibility which they did not 
choose to delegate ; and leaving ministers on one 
side and merchants on the other, they came, ac- 
cording to their wont, each to serve the cause as 
conscience and judgment should dictate. They 
came with their husbands and their brethren, 
from the cities and from the villages. The anti- 
slavery halls had been ever to them as an altar 



109 



before which to dedicate their young children to 
righteousness and freedom. They came with the 
joyful consciousness that whatever subjects might 
be adjudged foreign, they, at least, were at 
home. 

" The Chair rules that it is in order for wo- 
men to vote.^\ 

Not a voice was raised In appeal. The Mas 
sachusetts Society dared not, for the slave's 
sake — it would not for Its own, exile any of its 
members from its councils. 

The report of the Board of Managers w^as next 
taken up, and again the friends of the new paper 
rallied to the attack. Preparatory to action upon 
it, and as a step towards Its condemnation, Mr* 
St. Clair presented a resolution, affirming It to be 
the imperious duty of every abolitionist who could 
conscientiously do so, to go to the polls. The de- 
sign of this resolution evidently was, to convict 
the few non-resistants present, of Inconsistency as 
non-resistants or of guilt as abolitionists ; and as 
such the meeting received it. At any other time 
the resolution would doubtless have passed — the 
great majority of the Society being voters. But, 
aroused to vigilant watchfulness of all who were 
10 



110 



attempting to drive them blindfold into absurdity 
and intolerance, they refused to make the slightest 
change on the resolutions of former years. They 
had never said more, during their whole eight 
years' existence as a Society, than that ihey would 
not vote for slavery ; and they saw too plainly the 
motives of this novel demand for a resolution word- 
ed affirmatively. Neither had they been so bit- 
terly reproached with the introduction of foreign 
subjects, without learning that the word " duty" 
or the word " ought," in relation to forms of civil 
or church government, on which abolitionists so 
widely differ, must uecessarily open the discus- 
sion of the whole vast subject of human society 
in all its aspects. It would have been impossible, 
at this moment, to have procured the passage of 
any resolution whatever, on which the opposition 
might build enginery by which to cast reproach 
upon any faithful abolitionist. So plainly had 
they exhibited their hearts, even while professing 
the greatest regard for the Society and all its mem- 
bers, that men's common sense forbade them to 
afford any facilities for such a purpose. 

Mr. Garrison substituted the following resolution, 
vvhich, being in agreement with the uniform prac- 



Ill 



tice of the Society, and in strict conformity to Its 
principles and constitution, was almost unanimous- 
ly adopted. 

'^ Resolved, That those abolitionists who feel 
themselves called upon, by a sense of duty, to go 
to the polls, and yet purposely absent themselves 
from the polls whenever an opportunity is pre- 
sented to vote for a friend of the slave— or who, 
when there, follow their party predilections to the 
abandonment of their abolition principles— are rec- 
reant to their high professions, and unworthy of 
the name they assume." 

The Society thus refused to turn its attention 
from its original object — to make every slave a 
freeman, to the new and inferior one, of making 
every freeman a voter. The members felt that 
this latter was their more appropriate business, 
as citizens of Massachusetts. 

After the passage of this resolution, the previ- 
ous arguments of the ''four," for anew paper, 
were reiterated against the report, by the Rev. 
Orange Scott, the Rev. Daniel Wise, and the 
Rev. Hiram Cummlngs, of the Methodist Church. 

There appeared evidences, however, that the 
Methodist laity were not so easily won into the 



112 



toils of the clerical Congregatlonalists. However 
much they might love their clergy and their sect, 
they loved the universal cause of liherty and hu- 
manity more. The venerahle Seth Sprague ex- 
pressed ihis, with feeling and noble simplicity, in 
answer to Mr. Cummings, of whose church he 
was a member. 

"I love to hear my young brother preach the 
gospel ; but when he talks of politics, it will hardly 
be considered vanity in me to say I know more 
about that than he. For forty years 1 have been 
in the political harness ; and many a day, in that 
time, have I been out to rouse men up to the 
polls. Sir, I never found any difficulty in it — 
they are always ready enough to go ; but to make 
them vote right, after they get there — thafs the 
rub. And who can do that like my brother Gar- 
rison ? His paper converted me, politically. 

1 have had great satisfaction in my old age in 
going to all the Anti-Slavery meetings within my 
reach ; and as I returned from them, with my 
heart warmed by the hopes which their union and 
zeal and harmony had kindled, 1 thought within 
myself, I am old novr — an old man, and shall not 
live to see the work of emancipation accomplish- 
ed. But, on my death-bed, when about to quit 



113 

this world, I shall joyfully think of those 1 leave 
In it, the abolitionists, — a band of brothers — 
united as the heart of one, to accomplish this great 
work. — But I cannot say so now ! — I cannot say 
so now 1" And the venerable man thought it no 
shame to weep over the love and confidence he 
had seen so wantonly betrayed ; and all the peo- 
ple wept with him. 

The opposition still wished to continue the 
discussion, though noon was long past, and their 
words were but repetition upon repetition. Dr. 
FoUen said, '' I think discussion should now 
cease, upon the same principle that bids the 
miller stop the wheel, when there Is no more 
grain in the hopper." 

The whole unmodified report was accepted — 
Ayes 183 — Noes ^4. A better proof than its 
adoption could not be offered, that the great body 
of the Massachusetts Society separated that day, 
with the determination of carrying the work vig- 
orously forward, through means of the elective 
franchise. They separated, with the triumphant 
consciousness of a three-days' battle, 

«« Won for their ancient freedom, pure and hoty!— 
For the deliverance of a groaning earth! , , . 

For the wronged captive, l.leeding, crushed, and lowly, 
Their voice went forth." 

10* 



114 



It was a painful trial they had passed ; painful 
as when brother meets the visor'd face of brother 
in civil war. They had hoped that this cup 
might pass, but they had not refused to drink it ; 
and their eyes were opened, and the bitterness of 
their grief taken away. 

The same Board of Managers having been se- 
lected, the acceptance of the report and the re- 
jection of the new paper, were sufficient indica- 
tions of the course they were expected by the 
Society to pursue. They therefore suggested to 
their agents, Mr. St. Clair and Mr. Wise, that, 
as there existed in the Commonwealth a difference 
of opinion in regard to the contemplated period- 
ical, and there having been no prospectus or spec- 
imen number issued by which it could be judged, 
it would be proper to use no efforts while en- 
gaged in their agency, to further its introduction 
or extend its circulation. 

But those agents were already too deeply in^ 
volved to heed the suggestion. The paper was 
already started, as an individual enterprize, in their 
names, with those of Mr. Phelps, Mr. Scott and 
others, to the number of twenty-seven, as a pub- 
lishing committee, Mr. Sianton acting as editor. 
Various and discordant were the reasons given for 



115 



persevering in the undertaking, after the demon- 
stration of the Annual Meeting, that its necessity 
was not of that imperative nature that had Leen 
represented. 

Mr. Stanton stated that it was a satellite of the 
Liberator, and that he could have wished it had 
been named "the Liberator Junior." Mr. John 
E. Fuller, on the contrary; when men who had 
never professed to be abolitionists hesitated to 
take it, gave them to understand that it was " to 
put down Garrison." Mr. Wise described it as 
an "anti non-resistance paper," and Mr. St. Clair 
as "a plan of Mr. Garrison's own, warmly advo- 
cated by the wealthy and influential Dr. Farns- 
worth." 

They went on to procure subscribers in con- 
nection with their lectures, and at the expense of 
the Massachusetts Society. Mr. Scott and Mr. 
Stanton were no less active in the same way. at 
the expense of the National Society. 

The paper w^as named " The Massachusetts 
Abolitionist ;" and when the array of its twenty- 
seven god-fathers appeared, Mr. Garrison direct- 
ed public attention to them, as the nucleus of a 
hostile society in Massachusetts. This they in- 
dividually denied ; but the nature of the case, as 



116 



well as their course as individuals, prevented 
their denial from obtaining credence. Coloniza- 
tion — American Union — Clerical Appeal — those 
embodyings of the spirit of tlie reluctant age with 
which abolitionists were in conflict, — bad all been 
baffled. But the spirit yet lived, subtler from 
added experience, and this was the new taberna- 
cle it had built. All these movements had, at 
their first appearance, comprised some of the 
faithful, but deceived. Great forbearance was 
therefore to be exercised, and great efforts made 
to unmask the deceit. 

This could only be effected by calling the at- 
tention of abolitionists to the personal conduct of 
the men ; as the paper Itself was purposely kept 
free from any thing which could enlighten the 
friends at a distance as to the enmity of its con- 
ductors to the Massachusetts Society. Their 
scheme could not, at first, be fairly judged by 
those who did not witness Its less public manifes- 
tations. It was like the fabled mermaid, seated 
where it could delude the unwary mariner; — 
above the water, fair and human — beneath, ter- 
minating in scaly and horrible deforiiiity. Those 
could not fairly judge it, who did not know that 
its principal supporters, at the very moment that 



117 



they disclaimed hostility to the Massnchusetts 
Society, were laboring at county meetings to dis- 
join the Counties from the State organization, and 
to divert funds f om its treasuiy ; while, at the 
same time, they labored to produce the most un- 
favorable impression from the fact that its pledge 
to the central treasury yet remained unpaid. 

The Massachusetts Society was like a ship 
struggling with a heavy sea. No sooner was one 
wave surmounted, than another threatened its de- 
struction. The next came in the shape of an 
answer from the New York Committee to the in- 
vitation to collect the money due, by whatever 
means they chose, provided that they should but 
acknowledge the existence of the Massachusetts 
Society. It contained a refusal on the part of the 
Committee to abide by the contract (the final 
limitation of which had not yet arrived,) and de- 
clared their intention to proceed as if neither con- 
tract nor Massachusetts Society were in existence. 
Such a step would be so fatal to harmonious and 
efficient action — so destructive to the Massnchu- 
setts Society, — so disgraceful to the New York 
Committee, that, in the hope that a last strenuous 
effort might prevail against it, a special deputa- 
tion was instantly sent to New York, to confer 
with the brethren, face to flice. 



118 



Arguments, remonstrance, entreaty, were alike 
in vain. One of" the Committee thought that 
" New York should assume the entire control of 
the Anti-Slavery funds, paying to Massachusetts 
such an allowance as should be necessary for car- 
rying on the cause in iliat State, which sum would 
not, he supposed, be large." All the New York 
brethren remained firm in (heir determination ; — 
neither modification — mitigation — nor even what 
the merchant often grants his bankrupt creditor, 
— extension, — could be obtained. 

The Massachusetts brethren felt it necessary 
to allude to the new paper, and its injurious ef- 
fects on the treasury and the cause. The reply of 
the New York brethren was, " fVe are neutral.^^ 

Fatal rock! to which the blind, the feeble, and 
the faltering cling, as the tide of controversy rises 
wdiich is to overwhelm them, but on which the 
unfaithfid merely ijretcnd to find anchorage! 

The Massachusetts brethren turned to their 
homes in sorrow and surprise at the determination 
tliey had been unable to move. Only one course 
remained for the preservation of (heir Society. 
Its injury, if not its destruction, would be the ne- 
cessary consequence of hesitating to adopt it, 
and they announced their intention of public re- 



119 



monstrance against the conduct of the Ex. Com- 
mittee, and a reference of the whole case to their 
common constituents — the abolitionists of Mas- 
sachusetts. Grief, they must, at all events, have 
felt: h\n astonishment atthe result of tlieir confer- 
ence would have been spared, had they been in- 
formed that it was, on one side, but a mere form, 
the whole affair having been decided, a week pre- 
vious, by the issue of a circular, of which the fol- 
lowing is an extract, signed by Messrs. Stanton, 
Tappan, Leavitt, Birney, and the most prominent 
of the New York Board. 

''The amount which the Massachusetts Board 
had '' guaranteed " to pay to this Society by the 
first of February just passed, was ^'7,500. Of that 
sum, but ^'3,920 have been received, leaving 
$3,6S0 due to this Society. From recent consul- 
tations had with the Massachusetts Board, we are 
fully authorized in saying, that the Board will 
not be able to pay this sum, much less the addi- 
tional sum of ^?,500 to fall due on the first of 
May next ; nor do we believe it will be received 
from the abcilitionisls of Massachusetts, wn/es.s the 
Executive Committee of the Americati Society 
send their own agents into the field to raise it. 
To the adoption of this latter course they feel 
impelled by a sense of ' the duties they owe 
the slave. They feel constrained to abandon this 



120 



"arrangement " for the following, an:iong other 
reasons : 

1. It works badly for tliis Society. Much the 
greater part of the $3,9'20 received from Massa- 
chusetts, has been raised at the expense of this 
Society, as the following statement shows. It 
was collected as follows : 

(1.) By individuals and societies, and 
sent directly to the Treasury of this Soci- 
ety, and, in the collection of which, the 
Massachusetts Society took no part, $471 12 

(2.) By the " Cent-a-week Societies, 
through the labors of N. Southard, who 
is employed and paid by the American 
Society,' 27105 

(3.) By the direct labors of IMessrs. 
O. Scott, Ichabod Codding, and H. B. 
Stanton, v/ho was employed and paid by 
the American Society, 812 42 

(4,) By Isaac Wlnslow and H. B. 
Stanton, at New^ Bedford, for circulating 
Thome and Kimball's journal, 750 00 

(5.) Received of the Treasurer of the 
Massachusetts Society, ^1,616 24 ; $500 
of which was collected by Messrs. Stan- 
ton, Tillson, and Thomson, — the former 
employed by the American Society ; — and 
$500 of which were paid by the Bos- 
ton Female Anti-Slavery Society, on con- 
dition that Mr. Stanton would deliver an 
address before them, and solicit pledges, 
which he did. Total, $3,920 83 



121 



Thus, of the ,^3.920 received from Massachusetts, 
since this arrangement was entered into, only 
about ^1,000 at the utmost, have been raised by 
the Massachusetts Society. Nearly all the resi- 
due has been raised by the American Society. 
We ask any candid man, if this is " carrying out 
the plan," as contemplated by the resolution of 
the Annual Meeting? And is it not suicidal for 
this Society to pursue such a " plan " any long- 
er ? 

Ah, what a rent was here, in the love — the 
trusting reverence with which Massachusetts ab- 
olitionists had persisted, against their better judg- 
ments, in looking to New York ! What a docu- 
ment to cast before her faithful men, — this new 
style of account-current, in which what thoy had 
paid, was equally placed to their discrcvlit with 
what tlTey had not paid ! What a reproach to her 
high-souled women, who had unreservedly dedica- 
ted themselves to the cause ! ^ What a shock to 
behold the anti-slavery enterprize presented in 
this degrading view to the gaze of the world ! The 

*Those women of the Boston Female Society who had long; 
seen a tendency in the conduct of tiie New York Committee to 
injure the Massachusetts Society, liad taken [^ains to have their 
customary annual appropriation to the cause pledged through the 
Massachusetts treasury, in anticipation of this very contingency. 
Their surprise was proportionately great at the iiigenuily with which 
their contriiiution was made discreditable to the Massachusetts 
Society and to themselves, by the incorrect assertion that it had 
been made in consequence of Mr. Stanton'a labors. 
11 



122 



American A. S. Society, placed, by ibis act of 
its committee, in tbe attitude of glorying in tbe 
collectorsblp of cop])ers 1 — tbe Farent Society, 
(as it bad ever been affectionately and deferentially 
called,) busied like Saturn, in devouring its pro- 
geny ! 

Tbis act created a necessity for a procedure 
still more vigorous tban bad been cont('m})lated. 
Tbe integrity and usefulness and good name of 
tbe National Society must, if possible, be rescued 
from tbe jeopardy in whicli tbis course of tbe 
committee bad placed tbem. More tban tbe exis- 
tence of tbe Massacbusetts Society was at stake 
— tbe ca\ise was endangered by tbe conduct of tbe 
committee at tbis moment. It was painful to 
meet ibein on tbe low ground of dollars and cents ; 
but tbey bad taken tbe field there, an*d tbere 
tbey must, of consequence, be met and rebu- 
ked. 

Tbe Massacbusetts Board, tbereforc, not only- 
issued an address to tbe Abolitionists of tbe State, 
as tbey bad given notice of tbeir purpose to do, 
calling on tbem to assume tbe conduct of tbe 
affair, but tbey, at tbe same time, gave solemn 
warning of tbe perilous crisis, and appointed tbe 
quarterly State meeting, as a suitable time for 
its consideration. 



mmmmmssmaA 



123 



More confirmation greeted the Massachusetts 
brethren on their return; of the fact that their 
agents were undermining the ground on which 
the Society stood. 

Mr. St. Clair had concerted with the Rev. S. 
Hopkins Emery, and two or three other clergy- 
men, comprising one third of the Bristol county 
board of officers, and, in the absence of the rest, 
they passed resolutions hostile to the Massachu- 
setts Society, making that county auxiliary to 
the plans of the New York Committee, and nom- 
inating himself as a county agent. He had for- 
warded his resignation of his commission as an 
agent of the iS'/rr^e board, — Mr. Wise shortly af- 
terwards followed his example, and both were 
thereupon appointed agents of the N. York Com- 
mittee, in which capacity ihey continued to la- 
bor in alienating the counties, and circulating the 
new paper. 

Boards of Managers and the people they 
aim to manage, not unfrequently differ, in the 
anti-slavery cause, as in all other causes ; and 
therefore it was that the Massachusetts Board, 
feeling no love of management or rule, were in 
the habit, on every extraordinary case, of refer- 
ring its decision to their constituents, as the only 



124 



way of presenting to each one the opportunity to 
discharge his individual duty to the Society, and 
as the best method of obtaining the manifold ad- 
vantages of discussion. 

The town and parish societies, in various parts 
of the State, began to meet for the consideration 
of this matter, which was felt to be one involving 
more than a single glance could unriddle. 

Those members of the Boston Female Society, 
who had the interests of the slave most at heart, 
communicated with their officers, for the purpose 
of calling a meeting. Their request was not com- 
plied with. Again they applied, to the number 
of forty-five, which number was deemed a suffi- 
cient assurance that a meeting was seriously 
required by the members. Notwithstanding the 
remonstrances of two of the counsellors, the 
President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treas- 
urer, the identical individuals who, in 1837, re- 
fused to sustain the cause against the incursions 
of spiritual wickedness, still refused to notify a 
meeting. 

Every moment stands at the juncture of two 
eternities, and is therefore^ of solemn consequence; 
bat the importance of making use of this, was 
more than ordinarily apparent. 



125 



The women of Lynn were standing alone and 
unsupported at the post of danger ; — the Massa- 
chusetts Society in peril, never more, needed or 
better deserved support; — a hope existed that 
George Thompson might again be induced to 
visit America by a timely and earnest effort to 
second the invitation of the Young Men's Con- 
vention, with the necessary funds ; — Henry Clay, 
from his place in the Senate, was calling upon his 
fair countrywomen '* to desist from anti-slavery 
efforts;" — this was the moment taken by the offi- 
cers of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety to labor harder to make it desist, than they 
had ever before done to induce it to go forward. 
They visited the members personally, assuring 
them that it was unconstitutional io call a special 
meeting* — that the board saw no necessity for 
one, and finally entreated them to take their names 
from the requisition. As one among other rea- 
sons why they should do so, the President said 
that she apprehended there w-as a design on the 



* Most of the husinessoftliis Society liad, frotn the beginning, been 
transacted in Special Meeting, and almost the only power grant- 
ed to the Board of tiiis Society by ils Constitution, is this, of 
calling meetings. The Constitution expressly states that "the 
President and other officers ARE authorized to call special 
meetings, " while there is not a syllable which authorizes them to 
refuse. 

11* 



126 



part of some, to recall George Thompson, and, as 
he left the country in debt, his return would, 
from that w:;ircumstance, be a prejudice to the 
cause, and she was therefore anxious to prevent 



f f 



By labors like this, a meeting was hindered 
at the time ; but as one wrong step ever demands 
another to sustain it, preparation was made for 
the Society's inipending quarterly meeting, which 
could not he prevented^ by the use of a sectarian 
gathering-v.ord, which did not fail to rally all the 
unworthy members: — "Come and help us to 
put down the Unitarians." Not one in fifty of the 
members were of that denomination., and the few 
who were, had ever been remarkable for the joy 
and .good faith with which they met all who differ- 
ed from them in opinion, and the heartiness with 
which they condemned the sins against freedom 
committed by their own sect. Mr. Phelps, now the 
pastor of the Free Church, was also affording his 
aid to unjustifiable sectarism, and, by a meet- 
ing thus drawn together, was a majority obtained 
who left undone all that the interests of the slave 
most loudly demanded should be done. A ma^ 
jority, in behalf of whom the President declar- 
ed at that meeting that" as to the difficulty be- 
tween the Massachusetts Society and the Execu* 



127 



tive Committee, the ladies did not understand it — - 
they had not come prepared to go into it, — it 
would take too much time — ^Yhy should we enter 
into the quarrels that were going on ?" Yet, after 
that very meeting, the President, and Secretary, 
as a committee on the lair for raising funds, 
issued an address, without the Icnoivledge hut in the 
name of the whole Society, in which they argued 
the necessity that existed that all the women of 
Massachusetts should send their funds to New- 
York, because the Massachusetts Society had 
-failed to meet its stated payments ! ! This circu- 
lar was committed to one of the agents of the 
new paper, to be distributed in the country, with 
instructions to keep it private in the city from 
those in whose name it was issued. 

The minority of the Society, who were neither 
ignorant nor unprepared, and who neither grudged 
their time nor themselves ivholly, when the Anti- 
Slavery cause called for the sacrifice, were much 
pained to find that into this little sluice, opened at 
the time of the clerical appeal, had rushed the 
cold and bitter waters of indifference, and secta- 
rism and chicanery, in a flood tliat threatened to 
sink the litde vessel that had, in earlier days, done 
good service to the cause. But they knew their 
place as a minority, and prepared to fulfil thatdu- 



128 



ty in another capacity, that they were prevented 
from discharging in this. The Massachusetts 
Society. — the parent and pioneer of all the rest, 
must not suffer for its fidelity, because the officers 
of the Boston Female Society had done wrong. 

They were, besides, a very large and efficient 
minority, numbering among them the women who 
had first originated and mainly sustained, for four 
successive years, the plan of raising funds by 
means of an annual fair, and they did not permit 
themselves to be hindered on this occasion, any 
more than in former years, by the smallness of 
the pivot on which the duty of the moment turn- 
ed. They knew that, for a season, it would appear 
trifling; — they also knew that it really icas ihe 
type and representative of a principle, — one of 
the many indications now observable of that stage 
in the progress of reform, when minds a little en- 
larged by its principles, begin to resist, in alarm, 
the philosophical necessity of a further widen- 
ing process, and, to avoid it, return to their origi- 
nal state. 

But to resume the Chronological order of 
events. 

The tenth wave seemed about to break upon 
the Massachusetts Society. The Board of Man-, 
agers looked around them upon the circumstances 



129 



of their case, for indications of the ^tIII of Provi- 
dence. They were ready and desirous to cast 
down the painful staff of office. Better men, they 
wished, might be found to sustain it — but each 
looked on the other and said, " Where can his fel- 
low be found, for clear-sighted devotion and faith- 
fulness." 

Once more they decided to mount the breach 
together, for the cause's sake. Had it been only 
for themselves, they would have scorned to stand 
one instant, in the humiliating posture in which 
the conduct of the New York Committee had 
placed them.. But it was for the slave — for their 
brethren throughout the State, who had confided 
in them ; and they doubted not that those brethren 
would throng up to the rescue. This mutual 
confidence was not misplaced. The members of 
the Society came together in great numbers, 
with the determination of paying up all arrearages, 
and, if possible, staying tlie destructive colhsion of 
feeling which they saw going on. 

The New York Committee were not absent. 
Thither came Birney, and Torrey, and Stanton, 
and Tappan, and St. Clair, and Phelps, and Scott; 
and face to face they met Garrison, and Lo- 
ring, and Phillips, and Chapman, and Follen, 
and French, and Brimblecom, in the presence 



130 



of all the people. JMen from the counties were 
there, to tell how those who should be acting as 
financial agents, were laboring to complete the di- 
vision which had, more than any thing else, occa- 
sioned the deficiency in the funds. Men from 
the towns were there, to hand over their purses 
with the declaration that to their delay the defi- 
ciency should, in part, be charged, and not to 
their Boaid of officers. The indignant members 
from New Bedford were there, who had forward- 
ed eight hundred and fifty dollars for the slave, 
and had seen it used for the purpose of casting 
reproach on the Massachusetts Society. And 
there, too, was Lynn, and Andover, and Plymouth, 
and Reading, and Abington, and the representa- 
tives of fifty other towns, where the Anti-Slavery 
enterprize had first struck root and borne the 
most abundant fruits — all earnestly bent upon 
conciliation — upon healing the breach, and upon 
sustaining the Massachusetts Society. 

In the course of discussion, many things before 
unknown appeared. The New York Committee 
excused themselves by the plea of necessity. 
They were dunned daily themselves, and they 
had been compelled to this course to get the mO" 
ney, '' Had they got it ?" asked Wendell Phillips^ 



I3i 



*' had not all the sources been stopped by this 
proceeding, against which they had been warned ? 
Why could they not have co-operated — why 
could they not still co-operate harmoniously with 
the State Board ? why should their agents, Mr. 
Stanton^ one of themselves^ among the number, 
make terms with the Couniij Boards, which they 
had denied to the State Board ? Mr. Stanton 
could, it appeared, co-operate with Mr. Torrey, 
in £ssex,. raising funds for the county treasury, 
and receiving only a part of them again for the 
National Treasury — why could he not extend co- 
operation, on better terms, to us in Boston?" 
The fiict appeared that money had been forward- 
ed to New York by the hand of agents on account 
of the pledge, which had never been credited ac- 
cordingly. Men saw ihat there had been no de- 
lay or hesitancy in " taking the Massachusetts 
Board by the throat, and crying, Pay what thou 
owest," and they inquired why their own attempts 
to liquidate the debt, had not been noticed.* 
The live-long day the discussion went on, the per- 
plexity in which men's minds had been involved 
becoming clearer and clearer, till after as complete 



* Speech of Samuel Reed, of Abington. 



132 



an investigation of the case as could be made, 
and the most determined opposition on the part 
of the New York Committee and those engaged in 
the new paper, the meeting sustained the course 
of the Massachusetts Society, l)y the passage of 
the following resolution: ayes 142 — noes 23. 

Resolved, That the course pursued by the 
Board of Managers of the Massachusetts Anti- 
Siavery Society, in relation to the difficulty now 
existing between that Board and the Executive 
Committee of the Parent Society, meets our 
hearty approval. 

Wendell Phillips now renewed the offer of har- 
monious co-operatron. 

Resolved, That we are ready harmoniously to 
co-operate with the Executive Committee of the 
American Anti -Slavery Society, in the collection 
of funds within this Commonwealth, provided 
they will act with us under the arrangement of 
June last. 

Hereupon the long-denied and painfully-con- 
cealed hostility to the Massachusetts Society 
burst forth, and the attempts to cast out Mr. Gar- 
rison, or to sink the Society with him, were re- 



133 



newed. Mr. Tappan saw no reason why the 
Committee should expect to receive the money 
at all, unless by taking the matter entu^ely gut ot 
the hands of the Massachusetts Society. Ihe 
Managers could offer no better guarantee than at 

first. ., 

u ^Ve c«7i— we do offer a better guarantee/ re- 
plied Wendell Phillips. " We are in a far better 
condition to meet this pledge, than before. The 
political campaign in the Fourth District is at an 
end, and will no longer absorb the funds, or the 
energies of the agents. We are stronger as a 
' Board ; we have a new General Agent ; we are 
awake, throughout the State, to the emergen- 
cy.'' 

Mr. Stanton seemed to suppose that member- 
ship in the Massachusetts Society implied an ob- 
ligation never to change one's views on other 
subjects; for he read extracts from the Lib- 
erator, proving that Mr. Garrison bad changed his 
opinions as to the principles of civil government, 
since the first establishment of that paper. 
Rev. Geor2;e Allen burst into vehement mvec- 
tive. '' I am ready," said he, pointing to Mr. Gar- 
rison, ''to attack the wolf in his very den, with 
the bleeding relics of his mangled victims yet be- 
12 



134 



tween his teeth." Mr. Birney, to the utter as- 
tonishment of the meeting, descended to the pre- 
scriptive ground first assumed by Mr. Stanton, 
and intimated that no non-resistant could consis- 
tently or honorably remain a member of tlie Anti- 
Slavery Society. 

IMen's minds went back to the days of the cleri- 
cal appeal, when Birney, then an editor in Ohio, 
had been tried and found wanting. That defi- 
ciency, so long veiled with silent and brotherly 
care by those whom he yielded up to the enemy, 
now defied concealment. He proclaimed his 
sympathy and knowledge with that of the N. Y. 
Committee, in the recent plottings. " WE felt 
the need of this new^ paper in IMassachusetts." 

A sudden light burst upon the meeting. All 
this whole long day's labored ringing of changes 
upon '' dollars " — " contract " — " non-fulfilment" 
" null and void " — all the foregone course of the 
Committee, — it was only a pretence, then, for 
keeping hostile agents in the State to work the 
Society's destruction, under pretence of obtaining 
money ! This debt of a few thousand dollars — 
men now^ saw why the wound it had made should 
be so dangerous. It was like the scratch of a 
poisoned weapon — slight, but possibly mortal. 



135 



Rodney French, of New Bedford, informed the 
meeting of the manner in which the funds of abo- 
litionists had been necessarily absorbed ; those of 
the clear-sighted, in sustaining the cause against 
the insidious attacks it had been undergoing— 
those of the blinded, in unsuspectingly co-operat- 
ing with the disguised enemy. '• Had this paper 
been presented in its true colors," said he, ''no 
funds would have been swallowed up by it in our 
county of Bristol. But men have been deceived, 
and they are now finding it out. Let me beseech 
our National Committee to change the ground 
they have taken. 1 do entreat them to meet us 
like brothers, and accede to this resolution. It is 
an olive-branch. The money will easily be raised 
by this harmonious co-operation — confidence will 
be preserved, and the slave in his chains will re- 
joice." Abby Kelly, the delegate from Millbury, 
followed in the same strain. " Let us even make 
, ourselves beggars," she said, " for the slave, who 
is denied the poor privilege of begging !" and she 
pledged herself to pay fifty dollars of the amount 
necessary to be raised, and her town of Millbury 
three times that sum. John A. Collins, the Gen- 
eral Agent of the Massachusetts Society, stepped 
upon the platform, with securities to the amount 



136 



of sev^en hundred dollars, in bis bands, and beg- 
ged Mr. Birney, who had risen to speak, to give 
way for a moment, that he might announce them 
to the meeting. Mr, Birney waved him aside — 
'* We do not want your pledges ! " and proceeded 
to reply to Rodney French. — ^' If the gentleman 
supposes that I will be the bearer of such a prop- 
osition as the one contained in this resolution, to 
my colleagues at New York, let me tell him that 
he has altogether mistaken my character." 

No more remained to be said." Wendell Phillips 
immediately withdrew the resolution so decisively 
repulsed. 

Mr. Tappan commented with severity upon the 
^' disgracefid scene he had witnessed," and coun- 
selled a division in the Society, saying that were 
he resident in Massachusetts as he was in New 
York, he should endeavor to effect it. 

A division in the Society, because the Society 
had deiermined, for the slave's sake, to continue to 
exist; and had sustained its Board of Managers 
in their efforts for its preservation ! here, then, 
was another layman, ready to do the bidding of 
the ministry in breaking up the Massachusetts 
Society. He might not be doing it intentionally, 
but doing it men saw he was, by this counsel. 



137 



The meeting separated, but not till multitudes 
had been disenchanted by that eight hours' session 
of many a fond behef, that, till then, had stood 
undoubted in their minds. 

The friends resolved in their inmost spirits, as 
they departed, to pay the utmost farthing of this 
pledge, notwithstanding the afflicting disclosure 
the Committee had made of their motives for 
having all along refused harmonious co-operation 
for its redemption. 

This day had been a painful one for the Massa- 
chusetts Board ; but they knew that they had 
done right, and therefore felt no anxiety as to 
the result. 

They were sustained by the abolitionists of the 
State, and they rejoiced at it ; not for themselves, 
but as a proof of the fidelity of their brethren to 
the cause. They had been sustained against the 
most determined hostility. A statement of the 
case, in the form best calculated to injure the So- 
ciety, had, previous to the meeting, been scatter- 
ed broad-cast over the State, under the direction 
of Mr. Stanton. It was matter of astonishment 
that so much effort to do injury should not have 
produced a greater effect. Truth was mighty, 
and had prevailed, to strip the difficulty of one 
12* 



138 



of its disguises — the cloak of the mere dunj and 
sliovv it ill the attitude of the assassin. 

The effect of the meeting was magical. The 
friends, in all parts of the State, rallied together and 
mulcted themselves afresh. How prompt were 
their donations, how fervent and brotherly their 
expressions of confidence, how painful their so- 
licitude at the developments made by the New 
York Committee, how forbearing their course with 
regard to its doings, the resolutions and corespon- 
dence of that period, testify. The Committee 
returned to New York, still keeping in the field, 
at the public expense, the agents who had been 
creating a division. The work went vigorously 
on, notwithstanding the drawback this occasion- 
ed. All this imhrogjio had been caused, in the 
first instance, by men of the orthodox Congrega- 
tional sect, and it was fitting that the honor of 
that sect should be vindicated by the laborious 
fidelity of others of its members. That the mon- 
ey was raised, — five or six thousand dollars in the 
space of two months, for the most part in very 
small sums, so that the State Treasurer was ena- 
bled to authorize the draft of the N.York Commit- 
tee before the final payment became due, was 
owing mainly to the self-devoting labors of ortho- 



139 



dox Congregational licentiates, of the Theological 
Seminary at Andover. From that sect came 
the bane — from that sect came also the antidote. 

At that moment of general and anxious effort 
for the payment of the pledge, private circulars 
were issued by Mr. Phelps, in behalf of the pub- 
lishing committee of the new paper, in which he 
urged men to devote all their funds to its estab- 
lishment, for this, among other reasons, that they 
would then know wdiat became of their money. 
This showed the origin of the rumors which had 
been circulated, that the Massachusetts Society 
fraudulently permitted its funds to be used to sus- 
tain the Liberator ; and that it paid an editorial 
stipend — (" a fat salary " as the term was,) to 
Mr. Garrison. These reports, false as they were, 
came with an ill grace from those who, it is to be 
hoped unknowingly, received from Mr. James 
Boutelle, one of their agents, money entrusted to 
him for the payment of the pledge, but who ap- 
propriated it to the •' Massachusetts Abolitionist." 

All these labors were in vain. — The pledge 
was redeemed, against all opposition. 

Next came the Annual Meeting of the Nation- 
al Society, where men from all the States met to 
consult for the good of the cause. 



140 



In full National Assembly, they resisted the idea 
that a difference of mind respecting forms of gov- 
ernment was a disqualification for membership in 
the Society. They preserved inviolate the an- 
cient broad foundation. They resisted, as the 
Massachusetts Society had done, any attempt to 
deprive women of their constitutional and inalien- 
able right " to know, and utter, and to argue free- 
ly," in this National Council. A resolution was 
also reported by the financial committee of the 
Society, that thirty-five thousand dollars was as 
large a sum as could be advantageously placed at 
the disposal of the Executive Committee during 
the year ; as they deemed that more could be 
effected for the cause by a local than by a cen- 
tral expenditure. 

The Society also earnestly requested the Exec- 
utive Committee to send no agents into the States, 
except with the advice of the State Societies. 
This salutary measure was strenuously oppos- 
ed by those connected with the new paper in 
Massachusetts. Previous to the meeting, they 
labored personally and by correspondence, to se- 
cure the attendance of such as would co-operate 
with them for the exclusion of women, and of the 
non-resisting members. The Executive Commit- 
tee, too, were, some of them, no less active to the 



141 



same effect. Mr. Birney issued an article In the 
Emancipator, the organ of the whole Society, 
and sustained from its treasury, in which lie as- 
serted not only that a part of the members 
were unfitted, by tiieir religious principles, for a 
place in the Society, but argued the merits of 
their principles per 56, representing them as iden- 
tical with those of the bloody and licentious An- 
abaptists of the sixteenth century. 

These labors all fell short of their aim. Still, 
as at first, the Society continued odious by the„ 
presence of its founder : — he, into whose heart 
God had put strength not to deny his individual 
principles, though their sacrifice was demanded 
by those whose love and approbation had hereto- 
fore been so dear, and wlio, through four danger- 
ous and toilsome years, had stood with him, 
shoulder to shoulder, in the forefront of the bat- 
tle against slavery. Oh that evil tongues and 
times had not been too mighty for their integrity ! 
May every one of them yet be enabled to see that 
any infringement of the principles of Freedom, is 
a hindrance to the emancipation of the slave, not 
to be removed by thousands of gold and silver, or 
the mightiest physical array. May God of his 
infinite mercy grant us, as a National Associa- 



142 



TiON of Americans, for the redemption of our 
country from slavery, the grace to see, that, as 
we can never give what we cease to possess, so 
our labors for the emancipation of the slave must 
be in vain, after the insulted angel of freedom has 
departed. 

The Massachusetts Board of Officers met im- 
mediately after this meeting, and decided to raise 
five thousand dollars, for the year 1839-40, as 
the proportion which ought to be borne by their 
State, of the thirty-five thousand dollars specified 
by the Financial Committee, as the proper ap- 
propriation to the central treasury. They noti- 
fied the Executive Conunittee of this pledge, up- 
on the understanding that all money raised in 
Massachusetts should be credited to its redemp- 
tion, and that no agents of the New York Com- 
mittee should labor in the State without the con- 
currence of the State Board. 

To this communication, Mr. Stanton, in behalf 
of the committee, replied, that they had still two 
agents in the field, (Mr. St. Clair and Mr. Wise,) 
and he inquired whether any objection would be 
made to their remaining in that capacity ! ! ! 

The New England Convention followed quick- 
ly upon the tread of the National Meeting. This 



143 



occasion bad ever been, among abolitionists, a 
hallowed festiral, to which each came to receive 
from all the rest whatever they might be able to 
give of comfort, and of knowledge, and of cheer, 
and to bid them all be sharers in his own full ju- 
bilee of heart. 

Here they had enjoyed their last earthly com- 
munion with the early-called and tenderly-belov- 
ed, who had been caught up out of the thick of the 
battle into heaven ; and, therefore, the returns and 
the memories of this day, 

" Like ?pots of earth where angels' feel had stepped, 



Were holy.' 

A shadow marred the customary brightness of 
the day, to those who had witnessed those work- 
ings of the spirit of treachery and intolerance, 
which have been traced in the preceding pages. 

Their forebodings were justified. This spirit 
made one more attempt to rend them as it departed; 
but, faihng in its purpose, it deserted the founda- 
tion it had been unable to destroy. The intention 
of forming a hostile Society had frequently been- 
charged home upon the members of the publish- 
ing committee of the new paper, and as often stren- 
nously denied. Yet, here it stood, at length, a 



144 



new organization in Massachusetts, giving, as its 
reason for coming into existence, the recreancy, i.e. 
the tolerance of the old. That it differed from the 
old Society, in not seeing that every real interest 
of mankind must he universal, and necessarily 
gather up all men in the prosecution of its march, 
was najToiv, sJiort-sighted, unfortunate. That its 
founders had not openly announced themselves 
at the timd^when Dr. Hawes consulted with had- 
ing aholitlonists nearly a year before, and that 
they had ever since been carrying on a concealed 
warfare upon the old Society, in the mask of 
friendship and brotherhood, must be very differ- 
ently characterized. 

Elizur Wright, Jr., so well known and loved of 
abolitionists, in days that were past, was carried 
away in the toils — another layman, in the clutches 
of the power that constitutes in New England the 
strongest obstacle to emancipation. He became 
a Secretary of the new organization, and the editor 
of the Massachusetts Abolitionist, and immediately 
strove to justify his course by asserting the recre- 
ancy of the Massachusetts Society. He was like 
the child drifting from the shore, after having un- 
moored his little bark, who cried out that the land 
was rushing backward, as the treacherous waves 



145 



bore him swiftly away. In the New England 
Convention of 1836, he had deprecated division, 
in a church so corrupted by slavery, that nothing 
but division could save it from destiuction. In 
1839, he was wrought upon by the circumstances 
with which the corrupt leaders of that same cor- 
rupt body had surrounded him, to labor on their 
behalf, for a division in the anti-slavery ranks. 
Those who recollected his course then, possessed 
a key to his present proceedings. 

Some of the leaders of the new movement ap- 
peared in the N.England Convention, after their 
secession, and gave reasons for their conduct. 
The reason of the Rev. John Le Bosquet was, 
that they felt conscientiously obliged to impede 
the free and conscientious action of women in the 
anti-slavery cause. The Rev. Mr. Trasksaid that 
they wished to afford an opportunity for men of 
name and influence, in church and state, to come 
and take the conduct of the anti-slavery enter- 
prise ; — men who now took no interest in it, and 
never would do so, unless they were made ofHcers, 
EHzur Wright thoug[it the new organization need- 
ed, because the old Society had refused to pro- 
nounce the act of voting at the polls a fundamen- 
tal principle — a test of membershipa — Christian 
13 



146 



duty. That ninety-nine hundredths of the So- 
ciety actually arid conscientiously went to the 
polls, was nothing so long as those remained mem- 
bers, in as good standing as himself, wlio conscien- 
tiously refused to go. The Rev. Mr. Torrey's rea- 
sons were all these, with "others which had never 
yet been given by any one." Mr. Garrison, 
deeply pained by the wounds inflicted on the 
cause, had said, with much feeling, '' I could weep 
tears of blood over this divisiq^i, if it would avail 
to stay its evils." Mr. Torrey, ridiculing his 
emotion, remarked that, " to see the gentleman 
weep tears of blood, would indeed be a curious 
physiological fact." 

Disconcerted as the exclusive councils of the fra- 
mers of the new organization had frequently been 
by the intrusive " common people," they look, 
from that experience, a hint in modelling their 
new constitution. Not every one who signed it was 
to be permitted to vote in their Society, however 
strictly his vote might be required of him at the 
polls. Only one gentleman for every twenty-five 
members was to have the privilege of uniting 
with the officers and agents of the Society in the 
transaction of business. 

Of the two chief pretences for such an organiza- 



147 



tion — the first, that the subject of women's rights 
to sustain civil and ecclesiastical offices Sic. had 
been " dragged in,^^ and '' hitched on,^^ (as the 
phrases were,) was an entirely false pretence, 
that subject never having been introduced in the 
Massachusetts Society. Women had, indeed, 
persisted in exercising the rights and duties of 
members, which they could not be prevented from 
doing without a violation of the letter and spirit of 
the Society's constitution, and if the necessity of 
a new organization was grounded on this circum- 
stance, its contrivers were plainly hypocritical in 
striving to make it auxiliary to the National Soci- 
ety, which also admitted women. They intimated, 
that they hoped to be able to make that Society 
recede from its ground next year ; — but honestly 
bigoted minds, conscientiously opposed to wo- 
men's acting in the anti-slavery cause on their 
own responsibility, would surely never begin their 
course of opposition by the sin of co-operation for 
a year. The second pretence, that the old So- 
ciety had become a no-government society, was 
without a shadow of foundation. The strongest 
political resolution it had ever adopted, to which 
Mr. Stanton's resolution in 1337 was feeble, had 
been passed this year. But, then it had refused 



148 



to cast out Mr. Garrison : *' ay ! there's the rub I" 
This exclamation of the Prince of Denmark, when 
his mind was occupied with the question/' to be or 
not to be," conveys, in this connection, a summary 
of the reasons which decided the new organiza- 
tion '^ to be." 

The New England convention decided that 
such an association, so gathered, so founded and 
so organized, could not give aid to any organiza- 
tion upon the old basis, wiiich it had deserted and 
condemned ; and they notified the Executive 
Committee at New York of the same. The hos- 
tility of its founders to the Massachusetts Socie- 
ty — the difference it liad made as to the funda- 
mental principles, the exclusiveness of its founda- 
tion — its mathematical position, working the same 
derangement in the anti-slavery system as a new 
planet in the orbit of the earth might do in the 
solar system, — all forbade it fraternal greeting 
or long life. 

The course the New York Committee should 
take in action, would be the measure of their own 
worth to the cause. So opposite were these two 
Societies, that one or the otlier must needs be un- 
worthy of the aliiliation. If the New York Com- 
mittee should, after their well-remembered wont, 
think neutrality possible, still to be neutral would 



149 



be to spare the criminal; and ^^ Judex damnaiur 
cum nocens ahsolvitur.^^ 

From the new organization thus formed, it was 
planned to send out division unto every local 
Society. Mr. St. Clair, and Mr. Wise, who 
had been the Swiss of this warfare, at one time 
during the year, the agents of the Massachusetts 
Board, at another, of the new paper, at another, 
of the New York Committee, were now made the 
agents of the new organization, for complet- 
ing the work of division. 

This having been done, Mr. Stanton no long- 
er delayed to intimate to the Massachusetts 
Board '^ that it would be the aim of the New- 
York Committee to comphj, as far as they could 
conscientiously, with the advice of their constit- 
uents as to agents." 

What was the new organization, then, in re- 
ality ? — men asked themselves. Its designs were 
unmasked by abolitionists in Massachusetts, as the 
Annual Meeting, the Quarterly Meeting, the Bris- 
tal County Meeting, the Essex County Meeting, 
the Plymouth County Meeting, the Worcester 
County Meetings, the Middlesex County Meet- 
ing, and the multiplied meetings of town Socie- 
ties had conclusively proved. It was but an 

13* ^ 



150 



agent of the New York Committee, under the 
name of an organization. What would be its 
effect ? to fulfil the wishes of pro-slavery divines, 
by multiplying nominal abolitionists of its own 
spirit, as millstones about the neck of the cause. 
May the New- York Committee dare to claim 
credit for veracity, if they but 

*' Keep the word of promise to the ear, 
'* And break it to the sense 1 — 

When, at the Judgment, they shall stand up face 
to face with the New England band of early abo- 
litionists who so loved and trusted them, what 
more can each one of them say than this: — ^' My 
mouth has never lied to thee ! " 

W^hat is the attitude of the contending hosts of 
freedom and slavery in Massachusetts, at the pres- 
ent time— the summer of 1839 ? The unfaithful 
have turned to flight., overpowered by the subtle- 
ty and fury of a pro-slavery church and ministry ; 
— have dishonored their Master, by conceding that 
such a church and ministry are his; — have forsa- 
ken and betrayed the faithful, offering them up as 
a propitiation to this ecclesiastical pro-slavery ; — 
have devised a new anti-slavery organization on 
liypocritical and false pretences, behind which to 
disguise their apostacy for a season. 



151 



The faithful,, undismayed by treachery, undeter- 
red by obloquy and persecution, unshaken by 
abuse, strengthened by experience, relying neither 
on a pro-slavery church, government, or ministry, 
but on God, and themselves as his ready instru- 
ments, have bound themselves more firmly to the 
cause and to each oiher, and are laboring with 
increased ardor in the promulgation of the truth 
which alone can save this slaveholding people. 



CHAPTER VI. 



CONCLUSION. 

We know the arduous strife, tlie eternal laws, 
To which the triumph of all good is given. 
High sacrifice, arid labor without pause, 
Even to the deaih :— else wherefore should the eye 
Of niau converse with immortality 1 

Wordsworth. 



Friends and co-laborers for freedom ! We have 
now anew and indispensable, though painful duty 
to perform. Our foes have hitherto been without 
the pale of the associations : we have now found 
the most deadly within. It misbecomes us to 
talk of " dissensions among brethren " — of" quar- 
rels among ourselves J^ — of *' dreading the strife of 
tongues," — of " hiding ourselves till this calam- 
ity be overpast." Without our most strenuous 
exertions, it will never pass, but as the remorse- 
less sea passes over the sinking vessel. If we 
would free the slave, we must meet and conquer 
a tyrannous influence and spirit, in the shape that 
it has now taken, as we have done in all its trans- 



153 



formations in the times that are past. We must 
disabuse our minds of the idea that all are breth- 
ren in the cause, vvlio call themselves such, 

*' Do you love freedom?" is the question we 
have startled our age withal ; and we have be- 
gun to judge men — of all classes and condi- 
tions, — by the reply their lives make to it. Class 
after class have thus been tried and condemned. 
In earlier times, we have bound ourselves stead- 
fastly to the truth which condemned them. Its 
might made riches a reproach, and " gentlemen 
of property and standing" a by-word. All our 
band joined their voices to the oracular one of 
truth, when these sinners were tried by their own 
principles of action, and found wanting. Why is 
it that some now cast aside the inspired maxim, 
*' by their fruits ye shall know them " — when an- 
other class of men — the ministry, are found re- 
creant to the cause of humanity ? It is because 
they have become like unto them. 

We are not without experience of the facility 
with which men add hypocrisy to wrong. Let 
the pro'essions of ^uch be to us. from henceforth, 
as though they were not uttered ; their past 
good deeds, registered with those of Lucifer before 
his fall. This and this only, in this emergency, 



154 



is allegiance to the God '' whose word is truth — 
whose will is love — whose law is freedom-'' 

When, in earlier days in the cause, some of us 
foresaw the present state of things, we submit- 
ted our souls to the prospect of its painfulness. 
We said, " thy will be done," in thus keeping our 
instrumentality effectual and pure. 

" May the numerous unpopular questions with 
which the anti-slavery cause is connected "(thus 
ran our prayer) "continually come up with it as it 
is borne onward. So that, up to the final triumph, 
the act of joining an anti-slavery association may 
be, as it has hitherto proved, — a test-act.''^ * 

And so we pray, still; for still and forever, 
Truth is one and indivisible. All moral questions 
are by their nature inseparable, in any other 
than a mechanical sense, and while we sedulous- 
ly keep them thus mechanically separate, because 
to do otherwise would be a sin against the 
freedom of others, and a betrayal of their confi- 
dence, we feel it to be no less a sin against free- 
dom for ethers to impede any man's course with 
reproach, on account of this eternal decree of 
God's providence. 

We have all preached emancipation by peace- 

* Right and Wrong in Boston, vvriUen in 1835. 



155 

ful means ; and now some are amazed that the 
attainment of all right, in hke manner, should have 
suggested itself to men's minds! We have all de- 
nied ihat might makes right, and asserted the 
supremacy of moral power; and yet some are 
standing in terror-stricken astonishment that ihe 
"woman question" is stirred in every heart; and 
'' otlier some " are persecuting and forsaking their 
brethren, because the examination and applica- 
tion of principles, though limited in the anti-slave- 
ry society by the terms of association, cannot be 
stayed in men's minds or individual lives. The 
time has come for men to look their terrors for 
the future in the face. A little thought will show 
them thus much at least ;— that it is no sin against 
an anti-slavery society, to apply, in another°asso- 
ciation, the peaceful principles by which it is pro- 
posed to abolish slavery, to the sins involved in 
existing governments or sacerdocies. If institu- 
tions, religious or political, are unable to stand the 
test of such an application, that, in the opinion of 
some, is the fault of the institutions. With this 
opinion, anti-slavery societies have no more to do 
than with the question sometimes started, of the 
duty of urging prayer upon the unconverted, 
whose prayers God pronounces an abomination. 



156 



Discussion of collateral subjects is often salutary 
and necessary in our associations ; but to a decis- 
ion upon them, by which new tests of member- 
ship are introduced, no anti-slavery society is 
conipetent. It ceases to be an ami-slavery socie- 
ty from the moment it assumes to decide upon 
opinions respecting governments or churches. 

No man is required, as an abolitionist, to en- 
dorse or oppose governments or church estab- 
lishments. But every thoughtful and' honest 
mind, whether its anchor have '^ entered into that 
which is within the veil " or not, feels called by 
its allegiance to freedom, instantly to resist any 
attempt to make one man accountable to anoiher 
for the progress of his mind. This same allegi- 
ance to the foundation principle of inalienable Aw-^ 
man rights, warns a man against laboring to pre- 
vent wo:nan from standing upon it, if such should 
be her determination. She may, in his opinion, be 
sinning against propriety — sinning against Paul, 
by acting in anti-slavery societies : but he himself 
sins against freedom in striving for her exclusion ; 
and any act against freedom, is treason to the 
slave. 

Men whose principles, thus imperfectly de- 
veloped, are at war with each other, will, in all 
probability, become w'orse in their last state than 



157 



in their first, especially if tliey are yielding not 
so much to their own convictions as to the pre- 
texts In which a public abstractly opposed to slave- 
ry, is fain to clothe its hatred to a real opposi- 
tion. If they are striving to pacify the foes of 
freedom by these outrages upon her principles 
and her advocates, their case is a desperate one, 
and affords but little probability of repentance. 

Surrounded as we are by the smoke and dust 
of the hottest conflict, we must keep all these 
considerations in mind, if we would avoid perplex- 
ity and doubt. Let us, from time to time, sur- 
vey the field from a higher point of view, and 
take careful note of tlie divisions of the battle, 
and the nature of the ground on which the hosts 
are encamped. What do we discern, as we as- 
cend the mount of vision and of difficulty ? We 
perceive hatred and malignant opposition occu- 
pying the same post as when we first roused them 
from their apathy. We are ever contending 
with our old opponents, under new names, and 
with every change of name and pretext, some 
whom we have loved and trusted, are ''carried 
away by their dissimulation." * 

* See Paul to tJie Galatians, from which epistle it appears that the 
Christian cause bad then reached a stage in its progress where it 

H 



158 



At the beginning, tliey were " as much Anti- 
Slavery as any one, but hated Mr. Garrison." 
What are they now ? Even " more Anti-Slave- 
ry than any one, but hate Mr. Garrison." 
Through all their various phases of Colonization- 
ists, American Unionists, Clerical Appellants, new 
organizationists, their moving spirit is the same ; 
— hatred of the freedom that defies their control. 
Even while professing to be laboring for emanci- 
pation, they have always been careful to express 
their hatred o( the free spirit in which abolition- 
ists carry on the enterprize. It must needs be so. 
There is eternal enmity betveen the spirit which 
prompts a man to strive for the mastery, and the 
spirit which calls no man master. It is an eter- 
nal truth, that he who wishes to rule, is unfit to 
serve. 

From this point of observation, we may notice 
not only the timidity and treachery of some, but 
the touching fidelity of others. A single individ- 
ual was once exalted by our opponents into a 
symbol of faithfulness to liberty and humanity. 
Now, the whole associated host of a State are 

was beset with the same (iifficiilties as the anti-slavery cause at 
present meets. It IkuI so tinninished the trust in the existing in- 
stitutions, and so strengthened the reverence for p!inci[)les, that 
XiVAny professing Christianity, were driven back into Judaism. 



159 



assailed with slander and contempt for a like 
fidelity. 

In this symbolic sense, an association is endow- 
ed by the enen ies of truth and freedom wiih a 
notoriety and importance not its own. In every 
such case, we have a finger of Providence, point- 
ing out to us the course we should pursue with re- 
spect to it. Identifying ourselves with it, we listen 
for the voices that have been wont to cheer the 
onset. The soul that is now silent is self-con- 
demned. 

Let us enlarge our horizon by ascending still 
higher, so that we can at a glance command the 
present and the past ; for so come many instruc- 
tivo lessons to the mind. We behold far back in 
the distance, days like those of Wat Tyler, of 
Wyclifie, of Knox, and Luther and Washington. 
On closely observing any such era of accelerated 
progress, we perceive great bodies of men, unac- 
countably to us, giving back at a critical instant — 
thrown into confusion by circumstances which we, 
at this distance of time, discern to have been of 
but the smallest moment ; and, seeing how the 
speedy and triumphant success of the right is there- 
by prevented, we suffer a sort of pain that we are 
unable to cast upon their path the light of our 



160 



knowledge. " Had they but known what we so 
readily discern," we exclaim, "howv different 
would have been their course !" and we marvel 
that they were unable to break the spell tliat 
bound them, and which one added glance of fore- 
sight or of faith would have shivered. 

We forget that, besides the natural obscurity of 
the hour unilluminated by the future, there is 
ever a shrinking terror on men's minds, which 
forbids them boldly to face the phantoms of their 
own times : — a spurious charity for wrong, which, 
prompted by a vision of oneself in a similar con- 
demnation, is not forgiveness, but treachery to 
Right. We overlook the obvious consideration 
that those transition periods were, like our own, 
infested with the treacherous and the selfish, 
whose fancied interest it was to suppress facts, 
circulate falsehoods, make up false issues, apol- 
ogise for wrong, palliate crime, veil baseness un- 
der '' decent pretexts," exalt profession into per- 
formance, and by any and every means delay 
impending change. 

This reflection should remind us that such 
light as we are fain to cast upon past times in our 
impatience of their blindness, is the same as duty 
binds us to communicate to our own. When we 



161 



observe, the importance of small things in the 
world's history; it should point us to the cheerful 
discharge of so lowly a duty as to record those in 
which we have been engaged. Let us not deem 
any of them so unimportant as to refuse to draw 
from them lessons of wisdom, nor strive to per- 
suade ourselves that aughl can be trifling, which 
is wrought into the great page of the past. " To 
serve the nineteenth century we must know the 
nineteenth century : " therefore, nothing is with- 
out consequence which helps to illustrate our 
times. Facts, warnings, rebuke, encouragement, 
consolation, advice, labor, — whatever the times 
demand, let us give as we have power and op- 
portunity, and we shall soon be made to know 
what it was that kept so great a distance between 
the words of lonely warning that have risen 
prophet-like upon the past ; and why, at some pe- 
riods, there could be no " open vision" or corres- 
ponding energy, but only the feebleness and incer- 
titude of ignorance and fear. Custom is never, 
by her nature, the handmaid of freedom ; and 
therefore in a struggle for the extinction of slave- 
ry, if we speak only according to custom, we shall 
lose the unhesitating distinctness which the occa- 
sions of the cause demand. The occasion now 
14* 



162 



demands, in an especial manner, the plain direct- 
ness of the very palace of truth. 

Let us, however, avoid the mistake of suppos- 
ing that we can find in the past, the exact paral- 
lel of the present, in any other than a spiritual 
sense. Truth — Love — Freedom — are ever the 
same; but the outward signs of their presence, 
and the manner of their workings upon society, 
will, at different times, be far unlike. The 
problems they present, may be wrought out by 
different processes, though the results are the 
same. This reflection will enlighten us as to the 
causes of the convulsive terror now manifested 
by the body of the ministry and their dupes — the 
clerical politicians. We shall learn how it came 
to pass that the latter were desirous of disjoining 
themselves from the abolition host, while they 
yet claimed the name of abolitionists. We shall 
see on what temptations they have 

*' fallen away 
Like water from us, never found again, 
But where they mean to aink us. " 

At the outset, they were encouraged by the com- 
paratively quiet progress of abolition in England, 
to believe that our own would necessarily follow 
the same course. Strong as was the agitation 



163 



there, it effected its work, without shaking the 
ponderous establishments, civil and ecclesiastical, 
which bore down upon the land with their " weight 
of calm." Here, on the contrary, the lighter 
yokes of church and state are so shaken by the 
contest, as to convulse those hearts with terror 
for their existence which lack the honesty to ac- 
knowledge the worse than uselessness of a church 
or a government which sustains slavery, and the 
humble faith in God to say, 

•* Whatever fall — wliate'er endure, 

1 know Uiy word shall slill stand sure." 

When such lose their confidence in the identity 
of the principles of freedom, with those of order 
and Christianity, they are disunited in soul from 
those who are pressing forward with undiminish- 
ed confidence ; and to disguise their change of 
feeling they sacrifice their integrity.* 

In our grief at their conduct, we undergo strong 
temptations to palliate and conceal, when we 
ought to expose and condemn. The greater 
need, therefore, that we often ascend the mount 

* Better, far better, said the organ of the clerical appellants in 
1837, that slavery should remain perpetual, than that the existing 
institution with which it is so intimately interwoven, should be 
disturbed. To roost minds comes this moment of distrust of the 



164 



of communion with the highest, there to 
strengthen our vision and our hearts. 

*' Weak eves on darkness dare not gaze: 
It dazzles like th^ noontide Maze. 
Bat he who sees God's lace, may brook 
On the U-ue face of sin lo look." 



*' Some natural tears we shed" over those 
who have turned back from the van, and are 
trampling down the ranks they once cheered on- 
ward ; but thus strengthened and enlightened, 
we shall not long indulge a useless sorrow. We 
shall cease to be impatient when those whom we 
yet believe true, are slow to see and to act, in 
an emergency requiring promptitudet We shall 
but redouble our own laborious vigilance ; — we 
shall but make more intense our own fervent en- 
deavor. ^Ve are laying the foundations of many 



principles of righteousness— want of faiih in God. Orange Scott, 
who then stood firm, has in this last crisis, deserted the rause, mov- 
ed by ihe same temptation. When he sees Church and Slate shak- 
en by the advent of righteous and free principles, '" upon the earth 
tlis^tress of naiiuns with perplexity — the sea and wave^ roaring — 
men's hearts failing them fur tear, auJ fjr looking afier those things 
which are coming upon the earth,'" he says — " Slavery is the least 
evil of the two." With propriety might he be asked, with what 
feelings would the slave of the Louisiana sugar cauldron contem- 
plate the utter destriiciion of the civil and ecclesiastical arrauge- 
ments by which be is cruslied, soul and body ] Would he eay 
better, far better that slavery should remain perpetual as " the 
least evil o( the two 1 " Yet we are commanded to remember those 
in bonds as bc^und with them. However deep may be our attach- 
ment to institution?, we must do tight, in ihe faith that righteous- 
ijess can destroy no good thing. 



165 



generations ; and need not; to be disturbed by the 
discomposure of such as comprehend us not. 
What though, to our hunmn weakness, the end to 
be attained seem farther off, as faithfulness rous- 
es indifference into opposition, or converts spir- 
itual terror into treachery ? yet is the day of 
redemption nearer than when we believed. What 
though, in future and severer perils which we 
KNOW beset the path we must go, we should, 
for a season, be deserted of all in whom we trust- 
ed for aid in this work of redemption ? even our 
Savior was left to '' watch alone one bitter hour," 
before any comforting angel was sent of heaven to 
strengthen him. 

Truth — Love — Freedom ! evermore must their 
victories for humanity be won through suffering — 
but they shall be won. ''Forever, Oh Lord! 
thy word is settled in heaven." 



APPEJVDIX. 



The following letters are selected and subjoin- 
ed as specimens of the secret correspondence of 
this period. 



[confidential.] 

Salem^ Dec. Ith^ 1838. 
Rev. S. J. May. 

Deal' Brother, — I presume you have been con- 
sulted on the subject named below ; but my anx- 
iety on the topic, leads me to write you. We 
found, some time ago, that the admission of other 
subjects into the Liberator had entirely destroyed 
its circulation, in many parts of this County, and 
others were gradually dropping it, while a large 
proportion of our most efficient abolitionists were 
uneasy, and took it only because they must have 
the local Anti-Slavery news of this State. As a 
paper more generally circulated and exerting a 
better influence was felt to be necessary, to ad- 
vance the cause in this County, we attempted to 
start a local Anti-Slavery paper here. But some 
were afraid — a few loudly opposed ; and the 
great expense, (far exceeding our first estimates,) 
finally deterred us from the undertaking. Still 
the conviction of the necessity of a paper, de- 



168 



voted to Anti-Slavery alone, which might circu- 
late without ohjection, among all classes of our 
friends, has daily gathered strength — and many 
who opposed our project then, alarmed at the de- 
moralizing doctrines now promulgaled in the Lib- 
erator, say we must have a paper, at all events. 
I have no desire to injure Mr. Garrison. His 
services in the cause entitle him to something 
n^.ore than gratitude. But the Liberator will, of 
course, remain under his control^ and will continue, 
no doubt, to pursue the same course it has for a 
year past ; and it cannot^ therefore^ continue to 
be the Anti- Slavery paper of the State, without a 
virtual endorsement of its doctrines. J\or will it 
have a fiee circulation among the large portion, 
the immense majority, of the Anti-Slavery com- 
munity, who dissent from its new views. JVow 
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society is a 
pretty considerably large and somewhat important 
body — and v;hy should it not have an o^cial or^ 
gan^ of communication with the public, to be de- 
voted to Anti- Slavery alone- 9 I am not particu- 
lar about the editor. If Mr. Garrison would 
edit such a paper, and devote his ichole time and 
strength to ?*^, instead of leaving it to printers* boys 
and every body, as he has the Liberator for two 
years past, 1 should be perfectly pleased to have 
him editor, though of course he would not consent. 
Quite a large number of our old and steadfast 
friends, who have been consulted, are favorable 
to the thing. It will be brought forward by me, 
at the Annual Meeting, if it is found that our dis' 



169 



creet friends generally approve of it. Please 
communicate your views to me freely and confi- 
dentially (if you wish.) 1 have no time this morn- 
mg to say a word on other topics. 

With respect and affection, 

Charles T. Torrey. 



iSalem, Dec, 19th, 1838. 
Dear Brother May, — 

1 dont know but my mentioning the objections 
some feit to the Liberator, led you to think of the 
project of a new paper, as a sort of opposition 
line to the Liberator. But this is far from my 
idea of the matter. True, the character and con- 
tents of that paper exclude it from circulationMn 
this county so extensively, that it does not answer 
the purpose of advertising our County Meetings 
even. Nor will its circulation increase. In some 
of the strongest Anti-Slavery towns, where most 
IS done for the cause, scarcely a single copy is 
taken, or can be got in. So it is all over the 
State. I suppose not more than half the circu- 
lation of the Liberator, (probably not one third,) 
is in Massachusetts. Nor will ihesi state of 
things, in that respect, be materially changed at 
present, in my judgment. I think it certain that 
papers from New York or elsewhere, cannot do 
for our State to act efficiently. And that there 
are thousands of abolitionists, and others who 
need, and would take a paper, wholly devoted to 
15 



170 



Anti-Slavery and published at Boston, admits not 
of a question. It would have five hundred to 
one thousand subscribers in this County, at once. 
Now, 1 think the good of our cause demands of us, 
that such a paper be started, and a small monthly, 
like " Human Rights," besides. And if it is done 
as our official State paper, there can be no ground 
for considering it as in opposition to the Liberator. 
Whereas, if individuals start a paper, the case 
will be just the reverse. It will then be a rival 
to the Liberator, and will materially injure its 
circulation. Now, a State official, coi^jined to 
Anti-Slavery exclusively, will not cross the track 
of the Liberator scarcely at alh I have, so far* 
heard of nol a syllable of disapproval but from 
yoAirself, from any part of the State. I do still 
hope, on reflection, you will think differently of 
the thing. Thpre can be no evil, or warfare, it 
seems to me, unless those who like the Liberator 
insist that it shall be, virtually, the State Faper, 
while not so in form, and choose to claim the 
whole of the vast unv)ccu})ied field, in ihis State, 
as its own. But if they resist and successfully, 
the nitasure proposed, then all peace or com- 
promise will indeed end. A new paper will, no 
doubt, be started, as an individual enierprize, and 
it will not spare the peculiarities of opinion, etc. 
manifested in the Liberator. It is true, it is open 
to controversy on peace, etc. But, on that very 
account, it has no claims to be the Anti-Slavery 
paper of Massachusetts, and to circulate as such, 
among those who reluctantly take it for its local 



171 



news, while they cannot endure its sectarianism. 
Now, my dear Brother, I have written very 
plainly what I think. Do consider the matter 
again and maturely. Our cause must be prose- 
cuted at all hazards and sacrifices, but that of 
principle, and I do think duty to our cause re- 
quires a new paper wholly anti-slavery. If those 
who like the Liberator cannot then sustain it, 
what will it prove, but the absolute need of a new 
paper ? 

Yours, as ever, for the slave, and 
with much affection, 

Charles T. Torrey. 



Salem, Jan. 7//i, 1839. 
Dear Sir, — I write to urge the importance 
of a full representation of your society at the An- 
unal Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery 
Society, on the 2od and 24th of this month. 
Measures of very great importance to the progress 
of the cause throughout the State will be brought 
forward, particularly the establishment of a new 
paper, of high character, to be devoted to Anti- 
Slavery only; and to be under the official con- 
trol of the State Society ; one which will urge 
political action as a Christian duty, in accordance 
with our original principles of association. Other 
things of equal moment to the onward progress of 
our cause, will be presented — probably on the 



172 



first day of the meeting ; other and obvious con- 
sideralions will show the great importance of hav- 
ing a full representation, from two to twenty from 
every Society. Let every one who .can attend, 
do so. Let none be chosen who will not attend. 
Select the most judicious and tried friends of the 
cause, and let them be there at the opening of 
the .meeting, at ten o'clock on the 23d, and be 
prepjired to stay two days. 

If your Society meets to chose delegates, let 
there be an expression of opinion about the new 
paper, (to be purely Anti-Slavery, and nothing 
else; to oppose nothing but slaveholding and 
doughface-ism) and let the vote be embodied in 
the instructions of the delegates. 

Please to see the officers of your Society, and 
have your delegation promptly appointed. 
Yours, for the slave, 

Chakles T. Torrey. 
Rec. Sec, Essex Co. A. S. Society, 



Boston, April ^d, 1838. 

Dear Brother^ — T understand that has 

left, or is about leaving you, and that you are on 
the lookout for a successor. Permit me to re- 
commend to you, . 

And now a word in respect to abolition. You 
are aware cf the collision between the State and 
National Societies — have seen, I suppose, the 



173 



statement of the case in the " Christian Journal, 
Extra" — and know that your County Board have 
taken supervision of the field within your County, 
and invited in the agents of the American Society, 
thus virtually taking sides with that Society. 
Well, your County Society is to meet soon in 
New Bedford, at which time and place, I have 
no doubt an effort will be made to undo what the 
County Board have done, and to pass resolutions 
sustaining the State, and condemnatory of the 
County and Parent Boards ; and what with the 
Quakers and colored people in New Bedford, it 
will not be strange if the attempt succeeds. 

What your views on the matter in dispute are, 
I know not, nor is it of any importance forme to 
know, so far as it concerns what I wish now to 
say to you. I will only say, then, as I cannot go 
now into the matter in detail, that I regard the 
Parent Committee in the right. They ought to 
be sustained. Nor do I believe that the State 
Board w^ould ever have sent out their protest but 
for certain " ulterior measures" which they wish- 
ed to accomplish thereby — one of these is to 
crush the Massachusetts Abolitionist, by shutting 
out of the State, the Agents of the Parent Society 
who are generally favorable to it, and where 
the)'' can do it, without interfering with the duties 
of their agency, are in the habit of getting sub- 
scribers for it — another is to make the Society 
Anti-Orthodox in its influence — and another, by 
having the entire control of the cause in the State, 
to take advantage of it for the promulgation of 



174 



non-resistance, no-government, Stc. &c. 1 can 
give you facts when I see you that will bear me 
out in all these positions. The truth is, Garrison 
and the Board are themselves guilty of the very 
things they are charging on others. They are 
just in the attitude of the man who cries " Stop 
thief," that he, undercover of that cry, may make 
off with the stolen goods. I hope to see you and 
converse with you at length on these subjects by 
and by. Meanwhile, if you agree with me that 
the Parent Committee ought to be sustained, I 
hope you will see that the meeting at New Bed- 
ford is not a packed one, but that those who 
think with us, as well as others, are on the ground 
prepared to hear the case, and take proper action 
thereon, should it come up. Remember me affec- 
tionately to your family. 

Yours truly, A. A. Phelps. 

P. S. Brother is a good abolitionist — " 

but wise and prudent at the same time that he is 
firm and decided on the subject. Of course he 
would not make a hobby of it. 



Such, efforts and accusations as the above letter 
Mr. Phelps did not hesitate privately to put forth 
against his brethren of the Board, though he never 
intimated to them, personally, that any such im- 
aginations darkened his mind. And even on 
resigning his seat with them, one month after the 



175 



date of this letter, he did not intend that his rea- 
sons for doing so should be made public. His 
own testimony, respecting similar allegations pre- 
sented as reasons for the formation of a new So- 
ciety only a year previous, is true now. At the 
moment that this letter was written, the Massa- 
chusetts Society had eight Orthodox Agents in 
the field, and but one of another belief. True, 
the Society could not, without violating its prin- 
ciples, become an Orthodox Society exclusively ; 
but the Society did deem it a fortunate circum- 
stance that Orthodox pro-slavery should be met 
and exposed by Orthodox anti slavery. 

Who that reads Mr. Phelps's testimony, Jan. 
1838, as given below, but must deeply compas- 
sionate the struiciile and concealment and w^eak- 

CD 

ness of soul which afterwards completely over- 
powered him, notwithstanding his better knowl- 
edge, and dictated his course during the remain- 
der of that year, up to the formation of a new 
organization, in 1839, and until, as the climax of 
his course, he submitted to be examined for in- 
stallation as pastor of the Free Church, by the 
well known pro-slavery divine, the Rev. Hub- 
bard Winslow. 



176 



Mr, Phelps's Testimoni ix 1833. 

*' And last, not least, there must needs be a new 
orgnnization, and a withdrawal iVom the Massa- 
chiiseiis Society, because, '* both the organ and 
management ol it &re under anti-orihodux influ- 
ence." True, there is not as much orthodoxy in 
either, as I wish there was. and as I think there 
ought to be ; but it is not the result, so far as I 
have seen, oi' any trickery on the part of those 
who are not Orthodox, nor of any disposition, on 
tlieir part, to make Orthodoxy or Anti-Orthodoxy 
a test of membership or olfice. And as it is, full 
one half the officers and managers of the Society- 
are Orthodox men: this '* Anti-Orthodox influ' 
ence*' has chosen and is sustaining an "Onho- 
dox" Agent, and one that is sent for someiimes 
to repair the mischief done by agents of the 
American Society : this Society, at its public 
meetings, has ** passed resolutions recommending 
that ministers and Christians, in their public 
meetings, should pray for the slave :" its own 
public meetings have been •'• opened with prayer;" 
its agent, (to say nothing of the liberty of its or- 
gan.) and its members have always had liberty 
to plead for the slave, in as " orthodox*' language, 
and by as '• orthodox" arguments as ihey pleased; 
and, in fine, the society has every one of those 
characteristics, by virtue of which, the Specta- 
tor declares the American Society to be '* practi- 



177 



cally orthodox;" and yet, strange to tell, the Amer- 
ican Society looks upon the difficulties that have 
sprung up here out of these things, with which it- 
self, by its agents and otherwise, has had as much 
to do as any one, as a mere personal and family 
quarrel ; and the friends of the new organization, 
on the other hand^ cannot endure the Massachu- 
setts Society, to be sure^ but are for going into 
most cordial and hearty auxiliaryship to the Amer- 
ican! A. A. Phelps." 



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